001foreign good evening I appreciate you all being out here tonight we are going to where we normally would go directly in the closed session tonight we are going to go ahead and swear in our newly elected board trustees so can I please have Mr Wimberly come on down and Ms Lowry and Ms Henry will take care of the swearing in Connie he wants you to hold the Bible yeah if you all get right in the center and face the audience [Music] you have to actually get near him to hold the Bible okay good trustees if you will both raise your right hand and repeat after me I state your name do solemnly swear that I will Faithfully execute the duties of the office of school board trustee for the granberry Independent School District of the
002state of Texas and will to the best of my ability preserve protect and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this state so help me God congratulations at this time if there's any family pictures that you want to take or anything we can go ahead and do that Mark did you want to have a picture with Karen before we get started or anything and then Connie did you want to Billy and Connie did you want to get a picture together she's like no I'm fine I'm good take a picture [Music] are you sure Connie one more chance you're good okay okay well Welcome to our TV board members tonight and at this time we are going to reorganize the Board of Trustees and we will take uh we'll start by taking
003nominations for board president and I would like to nominate Dr Harrington for board president are there any other nominations for board president okay then we will go ahead and vote for board president those who are in favor of Dr Harrington for board president please raise your hand and it is unanimous [Music] we are now taking nominations for board vice president Madam president I'd like to nominate Barbara Townsend for vice president are there any other nominations for vice president all those in favor of Barbara Townsend for vice president please raise your hand and that is unanimous we are now taking nominations for secretary I would like to nominate Courtney Gore for secretary are there any other nominations for secretary all those in favor of Courtney Gore for secretary please raise your hand and that is to
004against Melanie and uh Karen sorry it's going to take me a while to forget it names and then we have a 4-4 Mark Mike did I not get it right it's it's just Florida it's four to two what can you vote for you yeah you can vote for yourself it would be five to two then five two okay okay so it's five two okay that closes all of that and at this time we will go into closed session the board will now adjourn into executive session pursuant to the following sections section 551.074 to deliberate the appointment employment evaluation reassignment duties discipline or dismissal of public officers or employees and also and that will include staff recommendations as well as third catastrophic leave requests for catastrophic leave request and a fourth catastrophic leave request section 551.076
005deliberation regarding security devices or security audits section 551.072 purchase exchange lease and value of real property section 551.071 private consult with board attorneys the time is now 506. foreign thank you foreign the time is now six o'clock I call this meeting of the Granbury Independent School District to order there is a quorum present and um at this time I Mr Moore will I will um oh first of all for some of you surprise when we uh bet it through at five o'clock we re sorry and our new members uh Mrs Lowry and Mr Wimberley and we are going to reorganize the board and I will serve as the board president this year uh Miss Townsend nominated me and I feel very honored to serve the people of this community and uh certainly with pleased that
006Miss Townsend nominated me to be the president uh Mrs Townsend will serve as vice president this year and Mrs Gore will serve as secretary this year so you see us sitting a little different places here it's because we have new folks on and because some of us have stepped into new roles or old roles again having said that I if you will please John Mr morwell latest name location will you please pray with me Heavenly Father we're we're thankful for everybody here tonight um and we're so thankful for our teachers our students and our staff and Lord that we pray that everyone has a safe holiday coming up also Lord please help us to remember that our common goal that we have that we're here to serve our kids give us guidance and wisdom that
007we may make the best decisions for Granbury ISD and our children in the name of Jesus that we pray amen at this time if you will stand uh Dr Glenn will lead us in the uh pledges the United States on my today's society congratulations [Music] and Dr Glenn will you go ahead with your report at this time thank you madam president uh first just make the board aware uh right before we we came in to our meeting at five o'clock I was notified by our transportation department that bus 18 there was a medical incident with the driver all students are good it happened at ghs but the driver did leave with medical attention so just you may want to keep him in your prayers and thoughts again all students are safe and and at home
008now but uh that was a scary moment for the district also trustees you have the Personnel report that was presented in closed session you also have three catastrophic leave reports that are in your board packet two or fourth time requests and one is a third time request and we'll take action on those shortly as far as the report for the month of December I wanted to let you know that attendance and academics and safety remain our top three priorities as a as a district and I'm happy to report that attendance is up slightly in the month of December which is a good thing because historically you can Trend downward in December but we are setting just under 95 percent so 94.69 percent is a district and as you know attendance drive so much revenue for
009GISD also tutoring has started on a couple of campuses but we're getting ready for a heavy push as we know that STAR testing this year is going to be more rigorous as they incorporate writing and reading so a shout out to our campus principals and and certainly our curriculum department for the hard work they do and then our safety had the opportunity last week with our chief of security Wade Clark to visit with John Scott who is actually the new chief of security for the Texas Education Agency and we have out to visit with him a little one-on-one and then we got to hear him report to the region at ESC 11 service center and and really look forward to to the ideas the innovative ideas that he's bringing to the table to make sure
010that that safety is Paramount not only in Granbury ISD but but across the state of Texas from there closing out 2022 and looking forward to 2023 we will have a demographic Workshop as we begin to address the the growth tea does consider Granbury ISD to be a fast growth District as such we have the Templeton demographic report that was reported earlier this semester we will begin digging into that in January we also are going to put all basically host a legislative Summit so the Texas legislature will convene in the spring I've had the opportunity to visit with both representative Slauson and and Senator Birdwell and we look forward to getting some of the local school districts together so that we can discuss legislative priorities for public education moving into the spring and then finally strategic
011planning is well underway as we begin closing out the objectives that we had in g2025 we need to get begin setting our sites on the next five years and what district the district will look like as we move toward 2030 and finally two shout outs the first to Cindy Leatherman who is not here tonight but she was nominated as an HEB excellent educator so the Excellence in education award so congratulations to Cindy Leatherman two of my boys have had her and she is a gym and so shout out to her hopefully she's watching and then a reminder to everybody who's here tonight that Margaret Rodriguez continues to do a great to work and it stars accelerated high school and Thursday night at 7 pm at Acton Baptist Church we will hold the fall Stars graduation
012so I'm sure Margaret's out there in the audience somewhere Margaret thank you and thank your staff you do a great job and we look forward to joining you at graduation Thursday night Madam president that is the December report thank you Dr Glenn um we might be doing a little shuffling here to wait on our folks that are are coming to make our presentations um and I'll speak to that if you don't mind Dr Harrington we do uh we can go ahead and take action on the on the staff recommendations in our catastrophic lead requests I can tell you that uh that snow Garrett and KBS law are in route uh both have been held up uh one due to traffic and one due to a board meeting in another District so uh so at this
013time we can go ahead and move forward with the action items discussed in closed session do I have any motions on the actions on the um actions taken in closed session Madam president I move that we approve the staff recommendations as presented and I will second that I have a motion by Mr Moore second by Mrs Townsend to approve the staff recommendations as presented are there any is there any discussion all in favor raise their hand oppose same sign their uh it passes 7-0 do I have a motion on this catastrophic Glebe Madam president I move that we accept the staff resignations recommendations and oh we're just doing catastrophic yeah I believe that we accept the catastrophic leave as requested and I'll second I'm motion by Mrs uh Gore a second by Mr Moore a
014rhyme all those any discussion all those in favor raise your hand opposed same sign there being none that passes uh Madam president if it pleases the board we can move into the consent agenda while we're waiting on our reports I would like to note that if you do approve the consent agenda you would need to pull the annual Financial audit until after the report is given wouldn't we be better off going and looking at the reports at the end since we don't want to take action on anything until after we've allowed for public comment uh Emmett could you are you ready to jump in there and fill a board for us yes ma'am not a president I can I can do that thank you sir board in front of you uh tonight in your board
015book you do have the financial statements for the month ending November 30th 2022. if you'll look at that your Revenue collected to date equals 7.48 of the budgeted amount compared to 6.92 percent of the budget amount in 2122 you can see that last month we did make an adjustment to our budget for the investment income increasing that because we are going to be quite a bit higher with our short-term Investments this year and we wanted to recognize that we will keep an eye on that because it's likely with the interest rates the way they are we'll have to increase that again but we'll keep an eye on that each month what are we getting we stream it on our money that we have invested when we talk about the investment report in a minute the
016majority of our money is in Lone Star and we're at 3.989 percent thank you sir yes ma'am um if you'll look down to the expenditures you can see that to date uh 31.56 percent of the budgeted compared to 25.34 percent of the budget in 2122 um some notable uh issues on that financials there you can look at the function 31 which is our counselors and last year we did move quite a bit of those over to um to a idea B in that area and you can see that our percentage is a little bit higher this year so they were moved back in actually they were moved back into the local funds so different areas are being covered by the idb funds so we have new members members tonight were you acclaimed them how we're
017funded through I idab is is a special ed a Federal grant it is a grant that uh Miss kurtzinger's uh department does uh apply for and they do receive it they have specific things that they have to meet based on her application and it is federally funded on top of our state funding for that department um if you look at 32 function 32 um that person was moved into security but it was actually budgeted in function 32 at the first year so we will be eventually moving that money out of there unless something a need comes up in that function but if towards the end of the year that will be moved to a different function 34 and transportation you can see that we're at about 46.37 but as opposed to 36.78 last year that's
018the buses that you approved last board meeting have been encumbered so they're showing up in the the transactions and then if you'll look at 51 it's went down from 40 it went down to 44.85 percent as it compared to 53.64 last year and that was due to the portable moves that we did the first of the year last year as well as the property clearing at the Oak Woods campus so those those percentages are reflected lower this time and you can see that our very last one um 99 that's where we pay hcad um last year it was just a timing issue this year we paid them in in November and last year we would have paid them in December so it was a timing issue on that so that is your financials and I'll
019be glad to answer any questions if you have them are there any questions it's nice to finally see the interest rates ticking up a little bit yes sir we're going to talk about that just a little bit too right now unless you're a mortgage lender oh a home buyer or a home buyer yeah uh well our new board members do you have anything you'd like clarified before we move on you're good okay okay uh the next report you have in front of you board is our cash flow and investment reports you can see the majority of our money is held in Lone Star and we just talked about that a minute ago that percentage that we're gaining on that is 3.989 as opposed to last month we were getting 3.250 percent um the other major
020investment that we have is an Ameritrade that is that long-term investment that we're trying to move away from um we're liquidating that as it matures the last Liquidation on that will be January 2024 and then we'll have them all in the short term investments where we are receiving quite a bit more uh interest rate however you can see on that report that it looks like Ameritrade has a larger a percentage than they do but it is harder to get that money to liquidate and it is not as accessible to us but we are letting that mature and then moving it into the short term in the best interest rate that we can at that point again because of our new members will you explain to them how we have moved from short-term long-term short-term or
021the district over the years yes ma'am a few years ago after the last Bond um they did move some of a majority of our money into a long-term investment because it was there for uh just to gain interest and it was gaining interest quite a bit this last year with uh interest rates the way they were and the depreciation of that investment it was showing a loss many months and the short-term investment started to pick up and interest rates as the FED raised the interest rate so we've moved away from the long-term investment letting those mature and then moving those into the short-term Investments to gain a little bit more interest are there any questions from the board members thank you very much sir thank you ma'am okay we've danced around here a bit and
022we're about 10 minutes out on both the Otters and uh KBs um then would you like to move board members would you like to move back to the consent agenda and pull the audit or any and anything else you'd like to pull out Madam president the one thing I would like to pull out with consent agenda is going to the budget amendments all right and I wanted to talk about those uh people in our community who have donated for a Granbury ISD donation from Acton Elementary PTO to fund the bus transportation to Camp Grady Spruce for the Acton elementary students 1935 dollars donation from Granbury pirate basketball booster club to fund lodging expenses for Fredericksburg tournament and then a donation from Cody Garrison at State Farm for the GISD customer care award a hundred dollars
023that was a total of three thousand eight hundred and thirty five dollars that was donated by our community for our students at GISD so if you ever see the Acton Elementary PTO or the Granbury pirate basketball booster club doing a fundraiser go ahead and help them out because they're helping out our students and a thank you to go Cody Garrison from State Farm for supporting GISD as well that is all I have to say Madam president thank you any anybody else want to pull anything from it from the consent agenda that would let us pull uh the a to consider the approval of the annual fiscal audit and we will Act only on items B through I do I have a motion Madam president I move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented
024with the exception of a do I have a second I'll second motion by Mr Moore second by Ms Gore to approve the consented consent agenda items be through I there any questions from anybody on the board on any of these any discussion all in favor of the motion race your hand oppose same sign okay you want to go into that uh characters so that we keep the rest of the agenda basically what the way it was we'll take a brief recess someone watched the door the recess will be open the minute one of them shows up so we are in recess at 6 23. foreign the time is now 6 32 we will reconvene an open session and at this time Dr Glenn thank you madam president at this time we're going to have a
025special report to the board on our Aviation flight program this report will be presented by Miles Bradshaw of karchefsky Bradshaw and Spalding um had a visit with uh Mr Bradshaw probably a little over two weeks ago about two weeks ago and asked him to come in and do a and a special investigation into our Aviation program but specifically looking at the flight that that was taken by Mr Dawson at that time since he was coming in we asked him to go ahead and move forward with a a thorough investigation of everything that is Aviation from our building program to the airplane to coverages as it relates to students taking solo flights as part of obtaining their privates pilot's license as well as a a thorough detailed report of the flight logs detailing in specifics who
026has actually been flying the district airplane as part of the flight program which was approved by the Texas Education Agency so at this time a last miles Bradshaw to the podium thank you Dr Glenn Madam president board members about how long would you like me to talk about this Dr Glenn it's it's a pretty detailed report and I think it's important that we go through it thoroughly so uh the floor is yours for as long as you need it okay uh I think I can I can probably do it about 10 to 15 minutes but I'd like to and then take any questions from board members and so on the reports have been provided to board members and I had intended to to put together a PowerPoint I didn't quite have enough time so but
027I see you've got it up there very helpful um first let me just kind of tell you what I was asked to do as Dr Glenn yeah and just just two two points of order real quick and yeah I think she's uh for your ability to scroll um there is a uh an actual Aviation flight review and and also a um yes a a log book exhibit book that uh they will both be posted online uh as part of public record when this meeting is over okay does anybody in the back read that probably not but the trustees can see it up here well I've been talking for a lot most of my life so I'm just going to do most of that as Dr Glenn said the scope of my assignment was to to
028review the aviation program generally uh to look at some of the legal requirements policy requirements of the program make sure things were were moving along as they should and more specifically to look at the the aviation flight pathway of the program at the high school and and then even more specifically than that focus in on the operation and use of the district's owned airplane particularly with regard to the two pilots who are licensed I'm always going to say this wrong license PP I'll just say ppls [Applause] um and uh Mr Dawson who's the assistant superintendent and also involved in the program as well as Mr Mark Kirk who's the aviation teacher at the high school um in the in the review process I of course looked at background information that I found some on my
029own from The District's website I also interviewed several employees talked to a local community member here who's very involved with the aviation program Mr Kevin Ross he was very helpful in providing a lot of background information and expertise in the aviation industry and I interviewed folks on December 6th pretty much all day one day here at the administration building and and then obtained documents from from different folks to review the program I can say first and foremost and I've been doing school law for for 30 plus years I was down at Houston ISD in house for for many years under former secretary Rod page um and and learned a lot from him and have learned a lot from people like you working with school districts and I can tell you I was impressed with the
030aviation program the just to give you a little historical background for those folks who may not be that familiar with the program uh the the aviation itself kind of uh was introduced at the high school back around 2011. and it kind of went along with Aviation science courses as well as aerospace engineering courses that were offered for several years until right around 2016 2017 when students began actually building these airplanes and what how they would do that is they would get a donation from an organization a non-profit called Eagles Nest projects who would provide all the parts to the airplane and the kids would put it together with the assistance of of again local aviators Pilots aerospace engineers those types of folks and of course through the program they were building these planes and those
031were those were the aerospace engineering students at the high school that did that at first over the next three years from kind of that time until until when when covet hit in March 2020 the students there built three of these airplanes and and under the program when they're finished they give them back to Eagles Nest project and the Eagles Nest uses them for various purposes of their non-profit so students have a great opportunity to build the planes and they're at the high school they were doing that for three years straight and then I'd say the aviation program begin to accelerate somewhat um uh doctor or excuse me Mr Jimmy Dawson he he became the uh I'm not going to need that thank you sorry to make you fetch it um he he began as the
032CTE director at the high school and in May of 2020 and he had been principal at two of the middle schools for a good 16 years prior to that of course he's had his pilot's license since uh I want to say 1998 um and and so he brought that to the table with him as a CTE director about that same time while Mr Kirk was already at in the program he had previously taught middle school math but he had moved over the high school started teaching engineering type classes and he also had his Aviation uh pilot's license as well so it was a good fit to get this program really going around the time that Mr Dawson uh took over in late 2020. um what occurred kind of a milestone event if you will the
033district with the assistance of region 11 made an application to tea to get a very specific four-year course offering for students aka the aviation program where students could take Aviation classes every day I mean excuse me every every year every semester and if they took four of the six classes offered upon graduation they would have an endorsement for either stem or business and industry and so it was a big deal when when the district applied to tea for this and it was approved by tea and the way they approved it was they approved any school in region 11 that wanted to do it it's considered a a regional study program and a regional study program is is important because tea doesn't approve them for the entire State they don't approve them Statewide but if if
034an area whether it's a single School District or a group of school districts in a particular region that has a need for that type of education they can apply to tea to get approval of one of these programs and and that's exactly what the school district did here that was approved in I think February 21 and I will say that uh when Mr Dawson and Mr Kirk were the head of the program there at the high school around this time you know they had a vision for this program if you will they I think the ultimate goal was to provide you know aerospace engineering Aviation education to all students and particularly what we're talking about mostly tonight is the aviation piece of that program and as as if you if you don't know it's it
035can be very expensive to learn how to fly a plane instructors get paid 75 dollars and up per hour you have to have 35 hours in order to get your private pilot's license so doing the math you know you're talking two to two to four thousand dollars just to get licensed um but I think to Mr Dawson and and Mr Kirk's credit you know they both saw an opportunity that hey our ultimate goal here is to try to make this program available to all students and so over the course of the next two years uh they actually got some very good donations they they received four thousand dollars in total donations that were considered student scholarships that would help go toward the hourly rates that these students had to pay in addition to that and
036a fantastic donation that was received by the program was 135 000 that was earmarked to uh to buy an airplane kit much like they had done before uh but it but now the district was going to own this kit they were going to own the airplane once it was complete and so it would uh and in fact they are almost finished building that one I think in January they're gonna be close to finishing it's already under contract to be sold to a private individual for 160 thousand dollars uh so they're going to make 25 000 more than they paid for it and then they'll in turn use that money to invest into the program so so all these things I say to to to say that the the program has been very impressive is Excel
037accelerated pretty quickly I would say in the last 19 months and the 19-month period is kind of key because that's the uh that's sort of the Looking Glass that I used to look because that was that's a time period that the school district has owned this particular airplane and so that was my uh time period that I really wanted to focus in on and operation and use of that airplane um I don't know if I said it the the plane itself it's a it's a 1963 Cessna uh 72d I believe is the model number and while that sounds like a really old airplane I've been told by industry experts that you know that's not that old and that there's lots of 60s 70s 80s uh airplanes still out there doing really well it also had
038really low mileage at the time the district got it and so it appears they got a very reasonable uh price for the for the plane of uh it was forty two thousand dollars and and of course I looked at uh when the district decided they were going to actually try to get a plane the process they used was essentially put out a bid or a bid request to say hey does anybody out there have a plane would like to sell it to the district and they went to a lot of measures they sent I think it was 35 direct correspondence to Aviation clubs and that kind of thing Aviation organizations as well as some local businesses to try to to get bids ultimately they only got one bid but luckily for the program it was
039a good one and it was the one that they ultimately bought for forty two thousand dollars um so let me I think there's there's probably about a half a dozen particular items I want to point out that I looked at real closely and then I'll kind of focus in on um I've kind of given you now the history of the program the background uh once they got their own plane they they housed it uh over at the Granbury municipal airport in a hangar cost 240 a month to rent that hanger and the plane itself is the hanger is locked up it has a padlock only certain people of course have the combination of that padlock those in the program that are going to fly the plane or work on the plane and the keys themselves
040are actually kept in the plane at all times and that's of course the whole thing is locked up so it's secure but because there are a number of different people flying the plane at different times it just made sense rather than have you know eight sets of keys floating around out there just keep one and keep it with the plane at all times so so of course one of my conclusions as I mentioned was uh compliance with school bid laws I found that everything there was fine and done exactly as it was required and even more so I did want to talk a little bit about the fuel and the fuel use of the plane uh the the plane that excuse me the fuel that these planes use is a is a slightly higher quality
041than say that we put in our automobiles you know which is usually like an 87 octane unleaded gasoline this is more of an aviation fuel uh with a 100 100 rating of octane no lead fuel it roughly costs about five dollars a gallon whereas uh when a regular gallon costs about 350. and so it is a little more expensive the plane has a 39 gallon fuel tank and and I asked what's the miles per gallon I was just kind of curious I had no idea what it might be and uh and similar to a lot of four wheel drive pickups I see around town it was about 10 miles to the gallon so but that that sounded pretty good really when you thought about it if you're going to be flying in the air so
042and the reason I looked at the gas usage and I looked specifically at what it would cost in fuel to go from Granbury to Abilene and back and based on the information I had that trip would require about 20 gallons of fuel and if it's five bucks a gallon that's about a hundred dollars of of fuel for a round trip from here to Abilene so just kind of keep that in your pocket for now um now one of the things that I looked at with regard to fuel and I'll just go right go right into this and then we'll move on to some other things as probably most of you here know there was a a reporter who made a report about this uh the use of the plane and the the statements were published
043from Mr Dawson that indicated that he had paid for a lot of his fuel himself and and that's true I found that to be true but not not quite what was reported and of course I didn't see every word that Mr Dawson said to this reporter only saw what they put on the TV uh in the uh internet and there were actually when I looked closely there were three instances over the course of this 19-month period where Mr Dawson uh reached into his pocket and and bought gasoline and or uh oil for the airplane and did not seek reimbursement for those monies they totaled uh it wasn't a huge amount but it was the two times for fuel were roughly 39.19 dollars uh and then of course the oil was at a cost of about
044nine dollars so a total of roughly 66 dollars of course another thing that has been reported that Mr Dawson made a 200 donation to the school district um and and I did confirm that that did happen and it did go into the aviation program uh in September of this year uh I would I do want to say about the plane uh in August 21 the the plane was upgraded the avionics were uh were significantly upgraded at a cost of about forty six thousand dollars there was some paint and body work for about seventy seven hundred dollars and some of the navigation instruments were replaced there were some that were outdated and so uh as a result of that and another thing I looked at was the insurance that the district has on the plane and
045you know initially the insured value was set at at forty two thousand which was the purchase price uh and and sure enough once these improvements were made the insurance policy was you know upgraded or amended if you will to to say that the insured value of the plane was now 85 000 which is what it is today um the insurance also gives a policy coverage of limits of one million dollars for each occurrence hundred thousand dollars for each person and the way we typically Analyze That in the school district world is is we look at what the school district might have to pay for an injury in most instances school districts are not liable for personal injury and negligence hype claims but they are are liable if it relates to the operation or use of
046a motor vehicle typically that's a school bus that's what most people think of the good news is for school districts there are statutory caps to those amounts that are 300 000 per occurrence 100 000 per person and 100 000 in property damage liability wise and so with those the policy amounts are more than enough to cover anything a person could possibly recover from The District in a lawsuit from an accident so you're covered very well there the other part of the insurance coverage I looked at was to make sure everyone who was flying in that plane was also going to be covered under the insurance and the insurance have has what's called the pilot endorsement where it states uh what pilots it will cover and of course as you might imagine it's going to be
047someone who's who's licensed to fly the plane under that situation um the other thing that that I had noticed is uh you know initially both Mr Dawson and Mr Kirk were specifically named as insureds on the policy and as many of us do with our auto policy you call your insurance carrier when somebody new to the family is going to start driving one of the cars you know and and the district did the same thing here uh over the years or the only the couple years here 19 months they have added four other people and those those people are instructors certified flight instructors who actually work for either in the flight or aviate on the lake in the past but the district's insurance does cover their liability insurance I will say is one recommendation having
048looked at the flight logs there are definitely some new instructors that have shown up in the last say three months that whose names specifically do need to be added to that list of insureds the um that said you know the insurance definition is Broad enough to it would it would most likely cover those people because they're certified flight instructors uh but at the same time it is a good practice to have the specific uh Pilots to be listed so that's one recommendation um I've included information in here about the actual Aviation program and the courses and so on I'm not going to go into those in the great amount of detail but I but I wanted everyone to see just what is offered in the program in how it's how it's expanding um so in
049that regard the question comes up as to okay so which students are out there flying this airplane I noted in the in the report information that was given to me shows that currently within the umbrella of the aviation program there are 115 students so a person without good knowledge might see that and go oh that means there's 115 kids out there flying flying the plane all the time well that's not true because like I said earlier there's a pathway for kids who want to to go the aviation flight pathway and the first thing they have to do is they have to enroll in one of the particular courses which is the aviation ground school and in that in that course of course they learn everything about flying except actually doing it if that makes sense
050and and they have to be in that course in order to at some point start their actual instructional flight from a certified flight instructor uh so so in reality the number of students are are much less than the whole program uh has within it and I'll get into those numbers more here in just a second um as a note you know the students that actually build the plane which is the other another Avenue there through the aerospace engineering it's only the students that are in the aerospace engineering course that are that are actually building the plane and when they build the plane it is they're also getting course credit because it's considered a practicum related to that course so they're not just doing it you know after school on the weekends they're getting course credit
051for it as well um one thing that I noted in in speaking to to all the district folks as well as some Community folks um I I sense that the community here gives significant support to this program and you know this Pro this is a unique program it's not at very many school districts and certainly even fewer I don't know how many but uh there's probably not many that own their own plane y'all might be the only one um and and in talking to people I found that there's a significant amount of community support for the aviation industry and of course that was reflected in the the tea application to expand the program it's reflected in the mentors who come uh come to school and help the kids build the plane uh your CTE director
052gave me information that right now there's four mentors that come every Tuesday and Wednesday for two and a half hours to help help these kids build these planes and so it's a you know from my vantage point that's a great asset for the school district and and vice versa for the community and the kids they should be taking taken care of and and taking advantage of um a little bit about the aviation teacher Mark Kirk uh let's see yeah Mark got his private pilot's license in June of 2017. and he also received what's called his instrument rating in the in this summer earlier and that allows him to uh to use the instruments within the plane the instrument system which in layman's terms I guess would allow a pilot to fly the plane looking at
053nothing else but the instruments they don't have to look visually at what's on this side or this side or right in front of you they can literally use all the instruments because they know them that well essentially fly in the dark if you will uh so he has that uh rating if you will as well now and I want to point this out because I think it it shows that one of the goals in the early part of the program was hey let's let's get let's get Mark Kirk certified as a certified flight instructor so that he can provide instruction you know at essentially no additional cost or very little additional cost to the school district rather than having a contract out and get all these cfis and pay for them and that will make
054the program more accessible of course for other students so Mr Kirk is very close to getting his certified flight instructor's rating he he has the hours uh the the requirement is a minimum of 250 hours he has about 300 hours and the only things he has left to do is to take the written exam the written FAA exam and to do a uh I guess I may not be the right word but I call it a test flight where he goes up with an FFA FAA examiner and uh and is tested on his Acuity as a as a pilot as a flight instructor so he's he's very close to to reaching that goal that they they envisioned uh less than two years ago so so the question then comes up uh you know who who
055can pilot the plane well initially when the plane was purchased uh the only two people who were legally licensed to fly it were Mr Dawson and Mr Kirk uh in addition to that as the program as students actually begin flying in the plane uh this the another group of people that are allowed to fly at our of course the certified flight instructors through Ava on the lake or in the pattern the the students are allowed the student Pilots if you will are allowed to fly as long as they're being properly supervised by a CFI and so that's that's the instruction that they get toward their 35 hours of obtaining their license um in one instance I will say the uh well let me I'll get into that here in a second so I want to
056I think the main focus of of what I want to present is really has to do with the what's in the flight log because I think that tells the story of the use and operation of the plane and whether it's all been above board and so I want to kind of move into that and focus on that um can you go let's see our exhibit that is the the flight log itself let me see what exhibit that is exhibit 12. so it'll be a good three quarters of the way probably and they are numbered on the bottom there it is okay I kind of wanted everybody to see this because if you don't if you don't fly every day or you're not around this you know what does a flight log look like is it
057a is it an app on your phone well it can be but here the school district from day one the May 6 2021 first flight was recorded in every flight as best I can tell and as everyone has told me has been recorded since then and the way to check it essentially you've got several columns there with the date the next one is pilot although information entered under pilot includes passengers as well or at least their initials and then I believe it has the starting tachometer out in hours and then the ending tachometer in hours and then the total hours of that particular flight and then there's a comment section where the pilot writes in where you know from what airport they went started at to what airport they went to and sometimes there'll be
058more legs than one in the flight and so those are also indicated by the call letters of the the airport and then they can make notes out to the right side where you see sometimes they do sometimes they don't things like had to add a quart of oil for example is something that's that's noted in the log one thing that that most people wouldn't uh probably wouldn't realize and I certainly didn't until I started looking into this but a flight log for this type of an airplane is not required by law the district doesn't have to have this legally now You could argue and and absolutely it's a best practice to have it don't don't get me wrong um but I but I would commend the district for for having it number one and particularly
059obviously if if uh you know this is a government-owned airplane uh it's flown by students from time to time so you want and should have uh as good a records as you can possibly keep in maintaining that Pine and make sure it's being operated correctly and I think while it's handwritten and there and it took me a while to figure out everybody's hand scratch I was able to ultimately put it all together figure out who flew when and with whom and for how long and where they went um and so and what I did with that information is it's in the report and let me and I tried to categorize it so it could be understood and you could see that that all the flights uh the bottom line that I found was that that
060all the flights were were authorized and within the authority that was given to Mr Dawson and Mr Kirk there's a couple flights that I want to talk about uh and and I give an analysis as to why I uh even though they've been reported in the news is one way I found that they were they did not violate any particular law or policy procedures or ethics that may have been applicable in this situation uh but first just to give you an idea of the of the Flight of the logs I categorize the flights like this uh there would be a solo flight kind of obvious uh one person or excuse me One Pilot no passengers a student instructional flight was a flight with a student and that was piloted by a CFI with a student
061if you will um something called The Discovery or demo flight this is a flight that would be piloted by either Dawson or Kirk and the purpose of the discovery or demo flight is is one to uh to take up a prospective student for example for maybe about a half hour or even less ride around the airport around Hood County and just to let them see what it's all about and it's not just students it's also parents who can go community members who are interested and in essence the the discovery flight is used to to promote the program and to get people more interested in the program that's what it's for and uh and that's in large part that's Mr Dawson's involvement and of course Mr cartoon being the teacher he's going to be instrumental in
062that as well so I said that because many of the flights that Mr Kirk took or excuse Mr Dawson took uh qualified as as these Discovery or demo flights another let's see yeah and the final type of flight is what I call a pilot training flight uh and that's for Mr Dawson or Mr Kirk you know they they have their pilot's license but they have to put in hours they have to take certain types of trips for example a cross-country trip and cross country doesn't mean you know all the way to Boston or Miami or Seattle it means to Waco or Abilene or College Station but it qualifies as a cross-country trip and that's important for licensing reasons and it helps them Advance their rating so so because of that both Mr Kirk and Mr
063Dawson were authorized to take what I'm calling pilot training flights and you'll see a number of those where and they can do those solo they could do it the two of them together they'll do a lot of several of them with the instruction the CFI instructor doctors because they with those guys they will a lot of times go farther out and get into more usage of the instrumentation because those guys are probably or well they should be licensed to to use those types of instruments so so those are the four types of flights um the if you look at the people who who flew these flights and I'm just going to give a kind of a summary of the numbers during this 19-month period there were a total of 136 flights and in those 136
064flights there were and I have the exact number roughly I'm just going to say roughly 250 passengers and and passengers including both pilots and passengers so on average the flight have you know 1.5 people in it okay give you an idea of the 136 flights that took place the numbers of those 136 the highest number was the aviate on the lake instructors they have been the instructors for a longest period of time over this 19-month period they had 48. next was Mr Kirk he had 29 flights the in the pattern instructors had 20 flights Mr Dawson had 17 flights and these are and let me emphasize these are the these are piloted flights where they were the pilots um Mr Dawson as I said had 17 there's a parent instructor who was authorized who's also
065a CFI and whose son was in the program he was specifically authorized by the school district to give instruction to his son and the benefits of that was that his son didn't have to pay his dad fees I don't think who knows but he did in the school district of course paid excuse me save money on having a CFI there that was free of charge and he was properly licensed he in fact was also named on the insurance policy already so anyway that parent instructor had 14 flights maintenance technicians had four flights doing their checks and checking for example the aviation system once it was put in and then there were actually Four solo student flights and one is I don't know if he's here or not but I remember his name Jaden and because
066he was it was published in the news and everything and uh one of his solo flights is noted in the log uh the other three was another student who I believe is the only other well he is the only other student to have done a solo flight in the plane but he did three of them so so kudos to those guys but anyway those are the numbers um the ones I want to focus in on are the flights that were that were called into question and there's actually uh let me take care of the the easy one first um the aviation teacher Mr Kirk right at the beginning right after the district got the plane took his two kids on a discovery flight his kids were student age at the time they were not GISD
067students but I think under the they might be someday I don't know nonetheless he had one flight with two children that qualified as a discovery flight you know there's nothing that says just because they happen to be the children of the pilot they don't get to have a discovery flight just like everybody else nothing says that and there was only one it wasn't excessive it was a 0.4 or excuse me 0.6 flight around Hood County Airport and that was it and then there was never another one by Mark Kirk um so in my mind uh that one was clearly authorized and so I don't even look at that one in regard to all the the standards and ethical codes that are involved because I think it was clearly authorized with regard to Mr Dawson you
068know and again for my purposes I tried to classify these um these flights and he had let's see he had three flights that would be considered Discovery or demo flights and again those are for community members students prospective students even even former students the ex to the extent you could say that they reasonably May participate or or add to the program in the promotion of the program that sort of thing um there was one flight that that I'm just going to call a discovery flight that was with with Mr Dawson's daughter early on and again it was a I think a 0.4 and it was similar to the other flight it was right around the airport and that was the only Discovery flight or what I'm calling a discovery flight uh with his um his
069children now Mr Dawson had 10 flights that I'm calling pilot training flights and those were ones where he's going out to get experience for himself for the benefit of the district or himself as a pilot where he might go on a cross-country trip to College Station to Abilene to Waco those types of places and the purpose of those trips a lot of times can be just because of the fact that as I mentioned there are different conditions involved you know different airports are handled differently I've never flown but so I'm told uh you know you have airports with Towers you have airports without Towers cranberry does not have a tower so for example when a person goes to get in the plane and takes off you know there's no there's no guy in the tower
070directing traffic you get on the radio you find a frequency whatever it is that everybody else listens to and you communicate with other Pilots that way and that's how you take off and that's how you land um on the other hand uh an airport like like Waco I believe is a tower airport and so that's a whole different set of rules protocols procedures to land and take off and that's the kind of experience that someone who's going to fly students through Discovery flights ultimately maybe get their certified flight instructor license that's the kind of experience you want them to have you want them to fly regularly and and in varied situations okay so anyway now I'm going to just go ahead and call this what I'm about to talk about a gray area because that's
071what it is ultimately um there's no question uh based on my investigation that Mr Dawson was taking a training flight for himself just as I just explained to you now the part that becomes questionable is who was tagging along with him the truth is under under the the way the program was initially set up you know it could have been just about anybody the way it was set up it was pretty loose and I get into that later um but these flights based on on the people I talked to they were flights where he was going a particular place for a reason related to his district duties as the pilot and before that flight took place the family member asked to go along and there were six of those flights one was with the spouse
072the one that was reported in the news five of those flights were with the Sun also a licensed pilot um I confirmed that the sun did not fly the plane he was only a passenger and Mr Dawson flew the plane the whole time these these flights also the ones with this with his son anyway took place a lot of times around the holidays like spring break Christmas time and I think the reason for that was you know that's number one that's probably when they were together and number two that's when Mr Dawson had time to actually make flights and to get caught up on his on his time in the airplane and so you know in the whole scheme of things over 19 months Mr Dawson took 19 flights and the they could be broken
073down as six were solo flights three were Discovery or demo flights 10 were pilot training flights and of those ten six of them were with a family member so so what do we do with that well of course I pulled up all the applicable policies procedures ethical codes that I thought applied here or that could apply and looked at each one of them the first one is and these are all stated in the report section 43 board policy on financial ethics right you expect your School Employees to handle money and other school property in a in a prudent prudent fashion not to misappropriate it that kind of thing um and exact and that's exactly what the policy speaks to it says that employees involved in the district's Financial transactions shall act with integrity and diligence
074and duties involving the district's physical resources um it specifically prohibits fraud and Financial impropriety I can tell you that the word fraud in legal terms is a very strong word it takes a lot a pretty bad act to constitute fraud in the eyes of the law this is nowhere near that just get that out of the way um now misapprop Financial I'm sorry not misappropriation Financial impropriety is the other part what does that mean well the policy tells us that there's different types of financial impropriety uh forgery didn't have any of that didn't find any um different types of forgery and then there is a broader category misappropriation of funds or District assets so then you get into what's misappropriation legally misappropriation really requires someone to intentionally and knowingly take something that doesn't belong to
075them right for their own benefit um here again I use the phrase gray area because I think that's what it is um I think in the situations where family members were in the plane with him while he was doing his job uh there was there was a dual benefit the district was getting the benefit of him doing what they asked him to do and his family member was getting the benefit of a plane ride if that's a benefit um and I think it is so what do you do with that well looking at looking at all the evidence the fact that in these logs which were not required by law to be kept uh every time a family member rode it was recorded by name they weren't trying to hide anything and I will say
076too the the you know the authority that was given uh to Mr Dawson I mean he started out as a CTE director right so he was the one in charge of this program and in charge of moving it forward and so I can't say this for sure but it sure probably likely he had a lot of anonymity in running this program and the fact that there's only two pilot piloted license two licensed Pilots that get in the plane on a regular basis um you know there's a fair amount of an anonymity to that um and but I can promise you this there's no policy there's no procedure that says doing what he did is a violation of policy or law and so so ultimately I don't see uh the intentional and knowingly trying to take
077something that clearly didn't belong to him because that was not his I don't think that was his intent his intent was to get his hours and you know one weekend apparently his his spouse uh I don't know I'm just making kind of well I don't say I'm making it up but for uh for demonstration purposes uh there was a discussion about Mr Dawson going to Abilene to get his hours on a cross-country flight uh his wife indicated hey that's where our daughter is can I go along let's go see her and he didn't think anything of it or if he did he didn't say anything and so they went he got his hours they had lunch they got right back on the plane came back uh you know he didn't he didn't stay overnight he
078didn't I mean it was it was Abilene uh but that's where that's where it's not no offense to people from Abilene but that's where his daughter was and there was definitely some benefit there I don't I don't say that there's not but it was a dual benefit and I think it's just too gray to to say it violated these these Financial ethics policies um the next one and the analysis is pretty similar on all of these so I won't take too much time but the second one I looked at was abuse of official capacity and this is actually in the penal code so if if one is found to have are convicted of abusive official capacity it is it is a crime um in the law crimes are held to a higher standard of culpability
079and essentially if I'm going to say well I didn't I don't think it even violates the financial ethics policy it aren't sure doesn't violate a penal code policy okay that'll take care of that pretty quick but the but in that statute it does mention misuse of property um and you know I would say you can't say it was absolutely intentionally unknowingly misused he was doing what the job what the district required him to do and he was doing uh and there was one and added benefit you know in our jobs as School District employees and I'm in private practice now but I was in-house at the time you know everything you do every day if you think about it not everything but if you take a phone call from your wife talk to her for
08010 minutes man you just committed Financial impropriety uh I mean you could look at it that way you could you could twist it you could apply it a little harder than it's meant to be applied um you know so so I just use that as an example the Texas educator code of ethics that's the ethical code that all Educators whether they're teachers administrators anybody certified by tea has to abide by their stand their standards they're kind of broad and you know as an attorney I don't have any say as to whether someone violates it or not I have I can't say I have advised school districts that when they they have reason to terminate someone's employment for example we will cite the standards of conduct if they apply and then those are used as evidence
081against that person to terminate their contract if they if we feel like they violated it um that's a hearing officer process that's separate from aspec anyway that there are three standards I think that that one could argue might apply in this situation 1.2 1.4 1.7 the first one Educators should not intentionally Here We Go Again intentionally knowingly or recklessly misappropriate use property or equipment committed to his or her charge for personal gain or advantage 1.4 Educators should not use institutional or professional privileges for personal advantage I think that one's closer if I'm being honest 1.4 uh is closer it's a closer call because of the way it's worded Educators shall comply with state regulations written local school board policies of which these are School Board policies so but again I think if you look at
082the conduct you look at the circumstances I don't think there was intent or knowing conduct to uh to misappropriate anything from the school district to get strictly a benefit for that person's personal personal use or benefit and then I think I can probably I'll end with or not end I'll end with this on the findings and then go into a couple recommendations and then stop um there is a policy about management of District vehicles and obviously having an airplane as a school property as a school vehicle is a unique thing and so as the the manuals and the the policies exist up to this point they did not speak to uh to the vehicle that is now that is the airplane they should I think uh and policy CNB local specifically says that the superintendent
083or his or her designee shall develop administrative regulations for requesting scheduling and using District vehicles for extracurricular activities field trips and other school related purposes I think the airplane falls within that and Mr superintendent either you or somebody else uh should should have some policies that address the use of the airplane and I will say that there is there is one policy about Transportation on the plane that has already been put into place uh or a procedure if you will that essentially an authorization form that every time someone gets in that plane there's going to be a documented you know something more than just the flight log a documented form that says yes they were authorized to be on that plane at this time by people that are that are have the authority to give
084that authorization so I think that's that's a good step in the right direction and and one that will take care of a lot finally just getting into my specific recommendations and I have I have seven paragraphs but there's probably only four or five in there um one is what I just mentioned that the school district really needs some very uh or more specific written guidelines and protocols for the operation and use of the airplane without question uh I think if there was any misstep in this whole situation that was that was it that those were not tighter controls that you know if I don't know if you as we now sit here and think about it as we talk about authority to fly the plane and getting authorizations to be on the plane and having
085insurance coverage and and all these things you know that process hadn't been set up at the time uh may have caused Mr Dawson to I would hope it would think differently and and to make sure he gets the right authorizations to to so that there's no doubt that it's an authorized flight under the circumstances uh another thing I think that I've included my recommendations is is really a cost-benefit analysis analysis of a couple things and I don't have an opinion one way or the other because I haven't crunched the numbers uh but I think it would be wise at this juncture to do it uh to look at two things well the the insourcing versus the Outsourcing of two things one the airplane I think you need to look long and hard at whether or
086not you really want to own an airplane I think there's there's absolutely some benefits to it there's flexibility in being able to fly it being able to instruct students on it I think over time you'd have a cost benefit and and and so there's definitely some benefits in having your own plane I'm not saying there's not um but it might be more trouble than it's worth as well something to look at the other in-house versus outsourced I guess would be your cfis the certified flight instructors now that said Mr Kirk is very close to getting a certified flight instructor rating and once he does that's going to save the district a fair amount of money in in Flight instruction I I suspect he's well I know he is because you actually have in your policy
087that once he gets there he's entitled to I believe a ten thousand dollar stipend once he becomes CFI certified so even though it'll cost ten thousand dollars to him it'll be worth more than much more than that I think to the program um that said that's another part of insourcing versus Outsourcing that I think you should look at um again no no particular opinion but something that's that's worth reviewing and reviewing again and again as a as the program moves along um finally in terms of any type of disciplinary action or disciplinary response uh first let me say that I don't think there's any reason to say or do anything with Mr Kirk uh yes he had his two kids on one flight I think it clearly fell within the category of a discovery flight
088a demo flight even and because it was one time it was very short that was it I don't see that as a problem I think it was authorized at the time and if you go otherwise I'd like to be on his side of that argument so so get that out of the way with regard to Mr Dawson um what I would recommend and I'm obviously this is your decision and really it should be your superintendent's decision with your input and uh my recommendation is kind of a range I think I think the the the minimum response would be what I call a written warning and directed training and versus the more maximum which I I think would be a written reprimand directed training um and possibly ethical trainings on the use of school property now
089the difference in a written reprimand versus a written warning is this a written reprimand being the stronger discipline essentially makes a statement where that says we think you committed this conduct and that's why we're going to reprimand you for it tell you not to do it again and if you do you're going to be subject to further disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment that's a written reprimand it actually makes a statement that we think you did something wrong and here's what we think you did wrong don't do it again or else okay a written warning on the other hand is we're not going to make a specific finding that we think you violated a policy or an ethical code but hey you're skating pretty close and we're giving you a warning that
090we don't want you to to do these particular things that we think you came close to doing that's a written warning um so there's no real finding or documentation that hey he committed this violation of our policy so those are the two differences in my opinion the the the factors weighing heavy toward nothing higher than or more severe than that um the fact that I felt I think he I think Mr Dawson had the authority uh to to do what he did probably to a point and looking at each of the flights looking at the circumstances of those flights uh the fact that they were all recorded right there for everybody to see um nobody was hiding anything I I just don't see it as as intentional or knowing uh misappropriation of the school's property
091I just don't see it and and so that's why my maximum would be a written reprimand as I've explained so I'll take any questions just one point of clarification uh when this goes when this goes online tonight there are quite a few redactions would you just explain those redactions sure there's essentially two types of redactions in the material it's really not very much at all one is to the extent there are student initials for example in the flight log that would be considered a student record student educational record because they were part of that course part of that program and so I've redacted that based on FERPA the federal law that requires that school districts do that um the other information is in is actually in my report where I've blacked out reference to family
092members of of either Mr Kirk or Mr Dawson that is based on kind of a quirky law in my opinion but under the public information act all School District employees have the uh right I guess to elect that things like their home address their home phone number you know social security number date of birth a whole list of personal information and then right at the end it says and whether or not that employee has family members the employee can elect whether to require that that information not be disclosed to the public so so and my report is now a district record right and so everywhere I referred to a family member of of either of these two employees um they have elected to keep that confidential in the record and so that's why it's blacked
093out now as I explained to you earlier today I can still talk about it and obviously I have because I'm not because I'm not a record this is the record and so so 10 years from now when somebody requests this and they get it it's going to be redacted and they may not be able to figure out that either of those two folks have family members from reading the report makes sense so that's that's that's the intent behind that thank you and one other point of clarification when uh when the students were taking their solo flights uh alone uh while getting instruction uh talk about that point as it relates to uh the insurance on the plane and for the students in the plane for that matter right um the insurance policy covers student Pilots
094as as long as they are supervised by a CFI in essence and and that supervision can come from the ground it can come it can come in from inside the plane either one as long as they're under the supervision of a CFI and so that's why they would remain to be covered where on the website will this be available for community members to see a bit with a picture of the oath ceremony right on the home page so at least for the next few days it'll be the very first thing you see on the screen that you can click on and go straight to the documents to download thank you I have a few questions if that's all right yes Miss Lowry yes uh first I'd like to tell everyone that I am I fully
095support the aviation program through the CTE but I am very deeply concerned about the airplane financial responsibility policies and the liability that comes with owning the airplane and could I ask you two questions absolutely how was this agreement originally established between you and GISD the agreement for me to do this report I received a phone call from the superintendent uh seeking my help okay I have a I looked up myself also a a tea introduction to Aerospace and Aviation and in here there's nothing that says that to do this program we should buy an airplane and it mentions simulators so a question is do we really need an airplane um I I liked what you said about doing a cost benefit analysis seems like there's an awful lot into it and the liability to the
096school district is big if something happens to a student or that airplane or anybody in it more comments I guess in questions uh sure I mean I don't disagree with the things you've said there are limitations on that liability uh you know everyone always worries about liability because everybody's so litigious these days but the truth is you know you have insurance you have insurance for a reason and it's to cover your liability and it does it covers the maximum amount of your liability and the 5 000 per seat is that correct on the medical on medical right okay and that's my understanding is that's similar to what you may have on an automobile where your passenger automatically has like five thousand dollars of medical no questions asked kind of thing regardless of whose fault it
097was I think that's what that's for sure so anything after that for medical then would come out of the person's own pocket well it would come it could come out of the hundred thousand it could come out of the hundred thousand limit per person as well yeah okay um let's see there was a question I had now I lost it um did we did we look at the job descriptions of the people to see whether or not they are to be teaching children or be up in the airplane with children I did look at those and and they do not specifically say you know there's no bullet that says and fly the school district's airplane for example um it's not uncommon there's always every job description has a phrase called other duties as assigned and
098that's where this would fall under now I will say it would always be better if there was a document that existed you know whether it's a memo from the superintendent to Mr Dawson uh or even an email for that matter that says hey I'm assigning you these particular duties in addition to what else you're doing I I kind of agree with you that that that that that really should have been done and it's something that you should do at this point okay um very good thank you you're welcome I have some other questions as well um kind of piggybacking off of one of her previous questions does KBS have any prior working ever working relationship with GISD or with Dr Glenn does KB Law Firm there was one matter involving the county they did the
099appraisal district for us I'm going to say in 2019 an AG opinion on how the board members at the appraisal district are basically how they're elected and how our proportionate share uh is is awarded based on our contribution to the appraisal district and so he uh typed up that matter and you have a better memory than I do it was ratified it was it was successful as well the um I think the County Attorney kind of carried or I can't remember he may be not against us but one of the other attorneys kind of carried the torch and we were behind the scenes feeding them the arguments and and they were successful we talked about a discovery flight can you define or did you define maybe I missed it can you define for us exactly
100what do you mean by a discovery flight what does that mean I think that's a great question and I I did Define it but it's my words I didn't find it in a manual maybe it needs to be in the manual um and I I thought pretty long and hard about my definitions of those four types of flights because I wanted to Encompass everything and and I also wanted to be congruent with what I was hearing uh of the types of flights that were authorized and so anyway so here's how I let's see what did I say yeah I'll just read what I have here Discovery slash demo flight they were referred to as both either one a flight piloted by Kirk or Dawson with one to two passengers primarily for promotional purposes then I
101put in parentheses might include prospective students or parents existing students or parents former students Community supporters GISD staff the primary purpose of which is to demonstrate the plain to interested persons with some reasonable tie or purpose related to the program typically such flights are about 30 minutes and do not go outside Hood County so to just verify that's your definition it is my definition you also talked about authorized flights can you tell us who gave the Authority for those flights when you said flights were authorized authorized by whom I think when when Mr Dawson was put in charge of the I say in charge it was put in his role in relationship to the program he was authorized to fly the plane because he had his pilot's license that was made clear by listing him
102on the insurance policy as someone who could do that and I mean I I can't say I saw any any documents any manuals that uh that said this is how we're going to do this um and here's you know here's the authority I mean granted those things weren't there uh but I don't think anyone would would say that he was in our authorized to make the flights that he did and everyone I spoke to uh was in agreement with that that yeah that's that was his authority but then I say well where is it where was it written down it wasn't it wasn't a particular individual who who gave the authority can't say that um I mean you could call it passive Authority if you want I wouldn't disagree with that needed to fly with
103students what what type of pilot's license do you have to have to be able to fly with students well if if it's in the instructional capacity it's a CFI which is a certified flight instructor the discovery flights there's no instruction and all you had to have is the the private pilot's license to fly anybody on a discovery flight a question probably more for the board what is the oh we call it the end game but where are we going with with making this Aviation program better we've bought an airplane are we going to try then to become a flight school so at the point where Mr Kirk receives his CFI the district would have to apply to the FAA to become a flight school and a question the liability of of having this airplane but
104I understand and would that apply to whether we keep the plan or not no if we don't keep the plane we can go within the pattern which is a flight school which currently operates in Hood County and that's who we're using for flight instruction currently uh Dr Glenn currently because we own the plane and the flight instruction is taken in our our plane what is the savings per hour for our students who are taking flight instruction I tell you I'm going to call up if you don't mind Todd Gibson who's our director of CTE he would probably be better served dancer specific questions I have but before no before did you prior to this investigation did you know any of the players involved other than the a contact you had with Dr Grant when you
105thought were filing suit to get the Attorney General's opinion were you aware of or did you know any of the players no just Dr Glenn [Music] I'd like to make one point if I may um this discovery flight program that the school has mimics very closely the experimental aircraft associations Young Eagles program which on page 13 of 24 once they complete the discovery flight the student receives a young Eagle certificate so I think this is modeled fairly closely to the eaas which is experimental aircraft association's program that's been around for many years and I think they use this as a model probably for the discovery flight for GISD and I would add to that that taking that Discovery flight and making them a young Eagle also gives them access to testing materials and things of
106that nature to help them on the written exam for what it's worth did you want me to answer your question Dr Harrington about the the flight school expanse verses yes please so I pulled this straight from in the pattern who is our uh they're our current flight school partner if anybody walks in off the street they're going to have to get a minimum of 30 hours of duel which is flight time in a flight school plane with one of their cfis and they charge 215 an hour for that uh 10 hours of solo at 155 dollars an hour 10 hours of ground instruction at 60 an hour they're gonna have to take a written test they're gonna have to do a medical and they're gonna do a check right that amounts to approximately 9900 they
107have a little blurb there I'm going to read verbatim it says the times listed above are FAA minimums it can be difficult to obtain proficiency and the times listed therefore it is wise to add 25 percent to the total price of the excuse me for planning purposes so all of that with the 25 percent had it on top of that it comes out to just shy of 12 500. so with our current system and and what we charge our students to go up in the GISD plane with a CFI from in the pattern uh it comes out to approximately 7 500 saving them just under five thousand dollars which is about a four forty percent savings for our students the way we're operating right now and that's been that's been one of the big goals
108of of this program is is to save that money for students could you explain to me uh how we're funding that program and how much of it's costing the local taxpayers how much of it's being paid by uh federal funds or state funds so I will say for the last two years I've the federal funds that come into CTE do not go back into any of these programs they they pay a particular salary that Bridges the gap between our special populations and and the rest of the school I think it's uh that that's how that's used so let me pull so without getting into too much detail there are one two three four five courses that we're talking about here uh this year we had 115 students in those courses and I won't bore you
109with all the the minute uh calculations but also understand that there's waiting weighted funding tied to uh CTE courses our Career and Technical courses our level one or our level two which are primarily freshman and sophomore courses they have a 28 bump on let's say just a regular Spanish class or algebra class uh and then our level three or level four our Junior and senior level courses primarily they have a 1.47 so a 47 percent bump so the state knows it's expensive to run Career and Technical programs and that ranges through all all 10 of the career clusters we offer all 18 programs of study that we offer so but the revenue projection based on 100 percent average daily attendance so we know that that's a little high um but uh for the 22-23 school
110year brought in 167 thousand dollars and for the 21-22 school year it brought in 194 thousand dollars for a total of 361 000. so it's funded by the kids that are sitting in those classes um Yeah by comparison you say we brought in 300 and give me the number again uh 361 000 what were the expenses for the entire program over that time for the entire program since since the beginning uh 158 592 a majority of that which is a one-time expense that hopefully wouldn't have to be purchased again being an airplane any updates and that is an asset that it's an asset that we can turn around and get recoup I would I would hope 100 if not very close According to some of the experts that I've talked to make sure I'm not
111confused are we getting more for the program than we expended on it the whole the last two years we got more than we've expended on it the whole time we've had it yes ma'am then I wasn't confused thank you yes ma'am yes Mr Gibson you get you gave a ton of numbers that that we don't have access to um would you make sure that those numbers get to miss Oliver so she can put those up for the public to look at as well absolutely thank you are there any other questions sorry um as far as what you're charging is there a cap on the hours or fees um as to which you're charging I'm just concerned about the cost of the taxpayers into the school district um my rate's 295 an hour I'd I've been
112too busy working on this to tally up the hours uh you'll get a bill at the end of this month and I don't know what it is and then the other question I have is um you talked about our GISD board policies a lot when you were going through with your program and so my question would be would you would you agree that the Texas law would supersede the GISD board policies [Music] foreign I mean I don't I don't know if I'd used the term supersede um they both apply for different reasons and so you know as a board you have the authority to enforce your policies you also had the authority to interpret those policies so you can you know you may find a board violation of something that is exactly what's stated in
113the state law and a D.A for example may look at it and go no we're not doing that so it can be a pot even though it's exact same wording it could be a policy violation but not a violation of state law ultimately but if I understand correctly board policy shouldn't be in contraindication to state law correct that's right you shouldn't have a board policy that is illegal yes no of course not right um I can see you've been to training um I I would say that um your board policies in for the benefit of the public as well uh you know we we have these policies that say ABC legal and ABC local and and when I started out as a school lawyer I thought what the heck does that mean well the ABC
114legal is just a restatement of what the law is and it cites to the different statutes ABC local is what you decide is your law in this school district within the bounds of that state law so and I make that point just to say that this is the way I interpret it but I would say that the Texas Penal Code 39.02 abuse of official capacity misuse of government property is a crime and it shouldn't be discounted on this matter that's why I asked that question but thank you are there any other questions Mr Bradshaw on behalf of Granbury ISD thank you for the quick turnaround on this I know it was short notice I know you put in some time to really put together a thorough report and I certainly want to encourage those in
115the audience and those online to to take time to read it we should have it up hopefully shortly after this meeting is over so thank you all right thank you Dr Glenn thank you board members thank you and have a safe trip home thank you very much sir did I see our auditor come in I did at this time we will go to the next report which is number nine on our agenda the presentation of the annual audit report for the fiscal year ending August 31st 2020. you location s [Music] okay well thank you all for having me my name is Lindsay kinemer I'm an audit partner with snow gear at Williams out of Weatherford and I'm going to walk us through the highlights of the audit report and I'm going to start on page
116one of the bound report foreign is the certificate of the board this is where you will approve or disapprove the audit report it requires the signatures of both the board president and the board secretary there's an Unbound certificate if you all can sign and approve that one and if you want to return it to Emma after the meeting that's fine you can scan it and send it back to us and we'll drop that into the pdf version of the report we'll send it back to Emmett to do the submission to tea and that's due by January the 28th if you'll also sign and approve a few of the bound copies those can be returned back to Emmett to keep on file in the business office in case anybody were to request a hard copy and
117we'll move over to page two and look at our independent Auditors report Pages two through four are independent Auditor's report and I'm just going to hit some of the high points starting in the first paragraph under opinions we state that we have audited the financial statements of Granbury ISD as of and for the year ended August 31st if you move down to the next paragraph we state that in our opinion the financial statements present fairly in all material respects the financial position of Granbury ISD as of August 31st 2022 and this is a clean or an unmodified audit opinion and that's the highest level of assurance that we can give you on the financial statement so that's what you want to see in this audit report if you move down to the next paragraph under
118basis for opinions we state that we conducted our audit in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America and also with government auditing standards our responsibility under those standards are further described in the auditor's responsibilities for the audit of the financial statement section of our report and I'll go over that here in a second if you move to the last paragraph on this page under responsibilities of management is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America and for the design implementation and maintenance of internal control relevant to the preparation of the financial statements if you move to the next page on page three at the top of the page under Auditor's responsibility our objectives are
119to obtain reasonable Assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from Material misstatement whether due to fraud or air into issue an Auditor's report that includes our opinions if you move over to the next page on page four in the very last paragraph under other reporting in accordance with government auditing standards we've also issued our report on our consideration of Granbury isd's internal controls over financial reporting and on test of compliance with certain provisions of laws regulations contracts green agreements and other matters and this is one of your school first indicators that we're required to report on and I'll go over that at the very end of the presentation and we're going to move over to page 16. page 16 is the balance sheet of the district at August 31st 2022 if
120you look on the left side of the page at the top of the page we have your assets under assets or liabilities deferred inflows of resources and then fund balances are at the bottom we have four columns going across the page the first column on the far left is your general fund the second column is your debt service fund the third column where your other governmental funds which were special Revenue funds and the capital projects fund and the last column on the far right is the totaling column the total assets of the district were 44 million 682 total liabilities were eight million one twenty one deferred inflows were one million five seventy two let me just make a quick statement um our Pages aren't numbered which he's looking at is exhibit c-1 just in case
121y'all are looking for it oh did the page numbers cut off yes oh I'm sorry so if you can give us exhibit numbers C1 yes sorry about that the total fund balances were 34 million 987 in the totaling column if you move back over to the general fund column on the far left of your total fund balance of the 34 million 30 million 216 of that is in your general fund and of that total you had 7.4 million committed for construction 1.2 million committed for equipment 1.3 committed for other and 20 million 316 and unassigned fund balance if you move over a couple of pages it'll be page 18 but it's exhibit C2 C2 is the income statement of the district for fiscal year 22. on the left side of the page at the very
122top of the page we have your revenues under revenues or expenditures and again at the bottom we have your fund balances we have the same four columns going across the page I'm going to start by going over the totaling column and then I'll go back and review over the general fund in The Debt Service your total revenues of the district were 101 million oh fifty oh fifty one total expenditures were 98 million eight ninety two which brought us to an increase in fund balance of two million one fifty nine and again the ending fund balances of 34 million 987. and if you move back over to your general fund that far left column and comparing your fiscal year 22 general fund to fiscal year 21 last year's audit your revenues were up about 2.4 million
123and that was mostly due to property tax revenues which was due to an increase in taxable values your total expenditures were up about 5.2 million most of that was in Function 11 for instruction of about 2.9 Million primarily due to payroll for Teacher raises and an increase in the number of staff and then we also had an increase of about 2.4 million in function 51 in fiscal year 21 about 1.8 million of janitorial services were paid out of sr2 so that's most of that difference this brought us to an increase in fund balance for the general fund of 841 435 and the total ending fund balances of 30 million 216. I also wanted to point out The Debt Service fund column you had total revenues in The Debt Service of 10 million five thirty eight
124and total expenditures of 10 million 411 that brought us to an increase of 126 thousand eight ninety seven an ending fund balance of 2 million three forty three and I wanted to point this out because these expenditures include some early debt that you paid so there was additional debt payments of about 2 million three seven five that were paid in fiscal year 22 and that saved the district about 356 000. we are going to move over to page 53 which is exhibit G1 so close to the back of the report and it's going to be right past all of the notes that are there in the middle what was the page again it's page 53 exhibit G1 exhibit G1 is the general fund budgetary comparison schedule there are four columns going across the page the
125first column on the far left is your original adopted budget the second column is your final amended budget the third column was your actual revenues and expenditures and the last column is the variance between your actual revenues and expenditures and your final amended budget so looking through the variance column your actual revenues came in over budget by about 595 000. if you flip to the next page on page 54 your actual expenditures came in under budget by about 1 million five eighty three so both going the direction that you would want to see we're going to move over to page 60. which is exhibit J1 and it'll be the first page it's a two-page exhibit it'll be the first page exhibit J1 is the Delinquent Tax schedule and I wanted to point this out because
126as we talked about property taxes increase in fiscal year 22. but if you look at your tax rate columns your maintenance and operations tax rate actually went down in 2022 it went from a 0.9664 down to 9.9438 but if you look at your assessed values those went up from 6 million 660 to 762 and that's due to the growth in the area so we wanted to point that out that that's what's driving the increase in property tax revenue if you move over a couple of pages to page 62 which is exhibit J2 J2 the Food Service budget exit exhibit J2 is the Food Service fund budget and we just wanted to point out that you had an increase in the fund balance of this fund of about 1 million 129 and an ending fund balance
127of 1 million 959 so this program has done really well it is over tda's three months of average operating expenditures that they allow but that has been pretty much all of our districts this year have experienced that because everybody was eating for free last year so districts were making more money in the Food Service fund but the district does have a plan in place to spend down that fund balance so we just wanted to point that out if you move over to page 65 which is exhibit J5 is the optimum fund balance worksheet you'll see at the top of the page that it's marked as unaudited and this exhibit used to be required by tea several years ago and then they gave the option to either leave this in as an unaudited exhibit or to
128take it out of the report so most of our districts have chosen to keep it in the report because it's a nice tool to be able to try and calculate a Target Fund balance for your general fund so if you start on line one your total general fund fund balance that we saw in the balance sheet was 30 million to sixteen if you move down to line four we have your total general fund committed fund balance which was 9.9 million line six and seven we do a calculation based off of your general fund expenditures so your total general fund expenditures were 76 million eight Twenty Eight if we divide that by 12 for 12 months we have the amount on line six which is six million 402. if you double that amount we have the
129amount on line seven which is 12 million 804 so if you were to add those two lines together it's roughly what you would it would take you to operate for three months which is typically what tea has said to have in your unassigned fund balance so if you move down to line 12 we have a calculation of an Optimum fund balance amount which is the sums of lines 2 through 11 and it's 29 million 107. and in line 13 shows you if you have an excess or a deficit compared to this calculated amount so right now we're looking at in excess of one million 109 but I do like to point out that line four your committed fund balance is included in that calculated amount so if you raise that committed amount that excess goes
130down if you lower it it goes up so there's a little bit of I don't want to say manipulation but wiggle room in calculating that amount so y'all are actually in a really good place we're we're recommending you keep some excess here because there is quite a bit of uncertainty right now with funding and things like that so I think this exits that you'll have is a good place to be and we're going to move over to page 77 which should be the very last page of the bound reports exhibit K2 and this exhibit is the school first indicators that we're required to report on for the audit and I won't read through all of them but I did want to read through a few that are directly related to our audit report the first
131one is sf1 was there an unmodified opinion in the financial report on the financial statements as a whole yes there was the next one is sf2 were there any disclosures in the report or other sources of information concerning non-payment of any terms of debt agreements at fiscal year end no there was not if you move down towards the middle of the page to sf5 did the report disclose any instances of material weakness and internal controls over financial reporting and compliance for local state or federal funds no it did not and the next one is ffsf6 was there any disclosure in the report of material non-compliance for Grants contracts and laws related to local state or federal funds and no there was not so all of these responses were favorable y'all scored a hundred percent on
132these selected school first indicators and that's the last exhibit I'll review over but did anyone have any questions one members do any of you have any questions I believe once again you've done it grow I'm sorry Dr please you have a question you've done a great job uh this would probably be an appropriate time not only to thank you but thank our financial director to thank our superintendent and to thank our principals and people out there who are working hard to make sure that the money that we get from our taxpayers is well used and I I've applaud everybody for this absolutely yes the business office Emmett Kathy and everybody that works with them does a great job and helps us complete the audit on time we never have any issues so we appreciate them
133very much Lindsey how many school districts do you all audit we audit 21 school districts and how would Granbury compare is it as you look at building budgets uh Revenue to to expenditures fund balance where would you put us I would say Granbury is as good as any District that we audit y'all are in very good shape uh again the credit for that goes to Emmett Whitefield who is our CFO and also for those in the audience and those online this report will uh will be uploaded to the district website as well and I think you can go back and review past audits too so thank you for that Miss Oliver thank you all very much thank you thank you thanks so much at this time we'll go into um our open Forum uh and
134our first speaker will be um Mr Johnson Dr Glenn Madam president Board of Trustees I am I'm deeply burdened and I sincerely apologize for placing this school district I have grown to love in a compromising position it never was my intent to bring any negative attention to the aviation program and for that I apologize my involvement in the program was to promote interest and support for students families and community members the expectation was to fly the airplane well beyond the minimum requirements set by the FAA and to be well above proficiency with knowledge experience and safety at the highest level I am proud of the aviation program and the Community Partnerships that have developed with retired and professional Pilots actively involved with our students I want to see the aviation program continue with students gaining
135opportunities and experiences for future Aviation careers in whichever direction we go I regret the position this has placed our wonderful school district and committed to ensuring that we move forward with quality programs exceptional educational opportunities for all students thank you for allowing me this time to not just to share my heartfelt passion for Granbury ISD thank you Mr Dawson at this time we will have Carolyn Reeves who wants to speak on the plane Carolyn Reeves thank you for letting me speak um what can I there we go um so I was kind of disappointed to hear about the plane I knew nothing about it never never heard a thing about it so it was a surprise for me to find out that Granbury had a plane especially with that this half a billion dollar bond
136that y'all presented to us as we were needing all this money for this new High School that's a lot of money but the other thing is I was trying to find where your all salaries were and who worked for a Granbury ISD and one of the things I have heard I can't confirm but the rumor is is that you just recently hired or promoted Mrs Leah Dawson who is assistant superintendents wife as a student service coordinator and that she's making like ninety thousand dollars and was there a process of application to go through for her to get this position um it was also surprising for me um that we had to have a someone overseeing the library after all the porn and pedophilia books that's still there and I wanted to know where um that
137attorney was for these books to get out I know you all said that you were worried about getting sued about taking them out of the library but um this attorney could have helped us get them out and I hope that we work toward getting them out thank you thank you Mrs Reeves Hannah baim or Baum and I'm sorry about not pronouncing your name correctly Hannah b-o-h mm third call Hannah b-o-h-m [Music] M all right moving right along to uh Shannon wolf [Music] good evening several weeks ago I saw Channel 8 news report concerning the GISD assistant superintendent Dawson and his wife also a GISD administrator using the school plan to travel to Abilene to eat lunch with her daughter on her birthday not a gray issue by the way Mr Dawson indicated that Mr Glenn
138or Dr Glenn and some of the school board members were aware of his actions also noted in the report that this trip was not the only one taken by Mr Dawson this year I fully expected the administration to address this issue and perhaps even tighten policies that concern the private use of school property but it was not what happened I was appalled when instead of handling this stories were changed it looks like a new policy was created and back data but I don't know and an attorney was secured by Dr Glenn there was not a reprimand nor was there transparency so the people who might be implicated in wrongdoing hired an attorney to investigate this issue and then perhaps inserted themselves into the investigation it did not look good guys so I looked at the
139penal code section 3902 and I think we've talked about it several times tonight but I want to read it one more time it says a public servant commits an offense if with intent to obtain a benefit he intentionally or knowingly misuses government property or any other thing of value belonging to the government or school that has come into the public servants custody or possession by virtue of the public servant's office or employment like a plane Mr Dawson confessed to using the plane to fly him in his function which was her birth is up to flying after and there is personal benefit and keep um seeing his daughter and then also keeping his license current both of these that um that we know of we're using government property for personal benefit by a public servant I
140fully understand that Mr Glenn and perhaps somebody on this board knew and approved of this unfortunately nowhere in the penal code that I found nullifies the law I have never in my life inserted myself in the public Arena nor have I ever circulated a petition until now six days ago I started a petition asking for an investigation that was both fair and unbiased as of this evening over 200 people from Granbury and Hood County have signed that petition asking for a fair and unbiased investigation into this um I don't know how many uh signatures I will have by January but I will present that to you in January and I hope I have over a thousand by then because I need you guys to hear me hear us we want an outside investigator to conduct
141an unbiased investigation and Report directly to the city I'm wrong I am hoping that deed that happened and if that is found by an unbiased investigator I will be your biggest cheerleaders your time is happening thank you very much thank you foreign Wimberley when he was lonely 1708 Bentley Court Granbury I come on behalf to send as a flight instructor I have over 10 000 hours as a instructor and 15 000 hours as a pilot and all that's very valuable for the pilots such as we're talking about tonight go out and apply the plane I my routine throughout the year is not going to different companies around the country flying with those Pilots in the re-qualified for insurance purposes all the underwriters recognize the training that I give the equivalent to my employer that I've
142worked for for 33 years of build a helicopter I know what how important it is to fly and to fly regularly so I have communist that we have his own to happen to go out and fly I have working Propel I have one point in time we had a contract where we could go fly airplanes I took advantage of that I have numerous several times took my family on trips with approval from my employer because they knew that I was given my time to save proficient and find her place thank you thank you Mr Wimberley toddford greetings Madam president and uh fellow Granbury acts of the school board I got a couple of things I want to share my name is Todd ferkins I live in Granbury over on the other side of 377 the
143non-traffic side of 377. um I wanted to address a couple of key things to primarily um first I want to commend you on being a Pioneer Pioneer severals in the front side you guys have been Pioneers in aviation we started an incredible program here you got an incredible list of volunteers a lot of x uh airline pilots mechanics Northrop government guys guys from the old cars will base a lot of mentors involved in the school commends a greatly Community for that program it's awesome I've been around a lot of other school programs and never seen anything that really engages a community quite to that extent so I want to commend you on a program the Pioneer aspect playing and again all this is is pulling to one individual specifically this was a board decision and
144our community for taking the risk we knew it was a risk when it came about but it's a great thing to start Aviation the world is so short of pilots and mechanics today it's going to really impact you as Travelers and the rest of our society if you look at any Airline or any mechanic organization within those Airlines or Aviation Industries they're super short of of both pilots and mechanics as well so I want to commend you for that I think this program has been good and great for engineering students in the section that you put it in the agenda it says discussion slash action I would say the the action of the school board is to take this as a step to take significant action to develop this program you got a huge opportunity
145there's no other school that does this you can really set some some charted ground you've got this great pool of mentors in the action we should be talking about tonight is starting the maintenance program the guys that aren't in the engineering program the guys like me in high school we were welding and building stock trailers out back because we weren't in the engineering classes and to me that's a great opportunity we've got plane you've got a pool of mechanics to work with it's just missing some leadership and I would challenge you there the second point tonight I'm going to see if I myself certified plot and structure commercial pilot got my CFI 32 years ago I've taught countless students a discovery flight that he that the gentleman spoke about earlier Mr Bradshaw that's a common
146thing that's what you do to get the bug bit that's what you take kids that's what you take neighbors that's what you take people on it's not something that's cooked up made up or what have you it's a common flight uh that's something we do the one thing that I would challenge that tonight I would challenge anybody that flew 17 times in 19 months whether they were current enough it met the guidelines but I would challenge you to keep the airplane I would challenge you to get more pilots get each one of you started if you got interest in it it's a great endeavor and we need to develop our students we need to be good role models we don't need to be heckling in the back of the room just because we're in high
147school acting like we're in high school we need to be really advocating these kids your time is up okay yes thank you great program great man keep up the good work Greg Harrell good evening trustees superintendent Glenn um Proverbs says in Proverbs 11 and Proverbs 15 it says that in the wisdom of in the multitude of council there is wisdom or safety uh so when this issue of the plane came up I reached out to a friend of mine who has operated in a ministered really large organizations in the private sector thousands of employees and also operated as a CEO he's a wise guy and so I reached out to him I just sent him a link to the WFAA report and I just asked him hands off what's your Insight here's what he said
148there are units of the Civil Air Patrol that have the means to expose students to Aviation with minor funding from parents whose children benefit from this exposure the students can get their license and can accumulate hours towards their certification my friend a young man accumulated 300 hours of wider flight from the above program at both his parents were School teachers with modest means further parents who have the money to spend on their children can arrange for private lessons with certified Pilots to teach their children to fly I see no reason for a school district to purchase a plane to expose students to Flying the cost per student who gets exposed to Flying would be prohibitive and a school administrator is not the kind of salty pilot his words that you would want to use to
149expose kids to flying I question the wisdom of the school district approving the purchase of a plane according to the article no other districts do this for good reason the liability insurance for this activity would be prohibitive somebody and he puts in parentheses I assume the assistant superintendent wanted to fly if that is the case he should pay market rate out of his own pocket for the experience and he goes on to address some other issues about Personnel because he's used to dealing with this kind of issue um what I would say is that as I listen to the attorney tonight that um the district hired to address this issue all I could think about when he was telling us about his investigation was I mean I the quote from Josie Wales came to mind
150and I'll I'll censor it for you but the quote is don't bleep down my neck and tell me it's raining come on you know the issue here is not an issue of whether or not the program is good all it can see that the program is good but the ownership of the plane when you have a situation where you have teachers in the classrooms having to spend their own money to buy school supplies and we have a hundred thousand dollar assets sitting out there that is costing money every day that's not wise for you guys to do that's an unwise decision when we have school buses that are in need of Maintenance over in the bus barn and you guys have a hundred thousand dollar assets sitting out there that's not a wise decision for
151you to make all I would do is ask you to reconsider the ownership of the airplane and remove it as even an issue of an Integrity for your staff thank you Mr Hill return us up thank you thank you Mr Kim bull [Music] uh the violation of the penal code is cut and dry it is black and white all you have to do is read it right here's the book if you want to borrow it you're more than welcome to I don't know Jimmy from anybody he's probably a real nice guy and we probably have a lot of things in common he made a bad decision did he should he face criminal charges I don't know should he still be involved in the program absolutely not in any way shape form or fashion he has
152duties assigned to him as an assistant superintendent does he not that's where he should be knocked down with students he hasn't been with students for a while I understand before he was promoted be an administrator or be a teacher one or the other number two uh rather fast and Rapid promotion from the library uh bounce around as a teacher at different places she was a librarian kind of acting for a little bit and now she runs the library for the school right after he gets promoted a couple questions that should be addressed by the board thank you Mr Bull check Jerry and Dewberry [Music] thank you for letting me talk for just a second will you put the mic down a little closer to you so thank you thank you for letting me talk for
153just a second um I've worked for the district for 23 years now 14 of those have been with Mr Dawson and and so as we're talking about some of this and and I don't get on social media a whole lot but I've heard some rumors and I've just really felt strongly that it needed to be said and when I think of Jimmy Dawson Integrity is the word that I have and I have never I may not have always agreed with the decision that he made nine times out of ten it was correct and but it was always about the students it was always unselfish and he has a passion for this district and he has a passion for thinking outside the box and bringing things to our kids that honestly I'm proud that we step
154out and do things that nobody else does and he was a principal at AMS for years for somebody who was questioning and and he's right in there with the kids and we did things that made our school better and I was excited when he became assistant superintendent so I just want to say my heart hurts because attacking a person's character on social media is shameful and this man has given a lot to this district and um he is again when I hear his name I think of Integrity he would never intentionally do anything to um that was selfish or um that would bring shame on this District so thank you for letting me speak Dave eagle [Music] Dave Eagle going once going twice Mr eagle um because we only have two folks that did not
155want to speak to um the issues on the agenda we're going to ask them to go ahead and come and speak this time Dylan Caldwell Dylan Caldwell Chris Kaufman [Music] good evening and thank you for all you do sitting up there for free I can't thank you enough for what you do for us y'all got a a tough job to do as our elected officials and we appreciate you I'm speaking to you as a citizen today I know that I'm the city manager of Granbury but I'm not here speaking on behalf of the city I'm here speaking on that behalf of me as a citizen of this GISD district and how much I appreciate everything that you all do for us this is a great school this is a great great school I've got people
156that come to work for me because they want their kids educated here what an awesome thing y'all have done created an environment where kids can go to the military academies through the shooting programs all the different CTE programs that we've sent kids around the world to compete on F1 competition through the CTE program we send kids all over the nation to compete and they do well and I want to thank y'all for that you know you you come to a meeting like this you hear about all the the drudgery or whatever somebody wants to complain about let me tell you something we're too blessed to be complaining about things we live in a great City we've got great leadership we've got great people here and while I'm while I'm on it you know I've known
157Mr Dawson for over three decades half of my life I've known this man and his wife they are people of Integrity they are born-again Christians they believe in the word of God they live by it and I I'll go to bat for him any day of the week but I'll tell you what whenever we want to tear down we want to tear down somebody for for a decision that was made in public is wrong this man works for this school system he he reports to these people he doesn't report to all of y'all he reports that that's a chain of command you got a problem you talk to them you don't start putting it on Facebook about what some School employee did you know I saw all this through the library stuff I'm sick about
158that you've taken steps to to mend that situation thank you thank you for taking care of things and you know what no school district is perfect not any individual is perfect but I'd stand behind this man all day long and if you fire him I'm hiring him for something I can guarantee you that he's a man of integrity he loves the Lord he's got the same values that you have as a person he's got the same values that I have as a person we all report to the same God and we're all held accountable at the end of the time and you know what I got a clear conscience about any decision he makes so that's all I've got to say I'm going to give you back 15 seconds thank you thank you Mr Kaufman
159uh we have a couple of these that stuck together uh Sherry beers Sherry beers and Kelly Ford okay uh if we need to now go back to our item on our audit report it was in our consent agenda and uh we need to I out of the entertain a motion to accept the audit report Madam president I move that we accept the that we approve the annual Financial audit report for the year ending August 31st 2022. do I have here a second I'll second we have a motion and a second to approve the audit report is there any discussion all in favor raise your hand all opposed at the record show a vote of seven and zero the audit report was approved foreign at this time we will go to our discussion and action items
160on 13A consider approval of the sixth grade health lessons by Brothers Pregnancy Center as part of the parent opt-in presentation good evening Dr how are you in front of you you have a request oh I almost dropped my phone sorry in front of you you have a request for recommendation regarding the sixth grade Community presentation by the Brazos Pregnancy Center you have all the slides used in the presentation that was presented to and approved by the school health advisory committee this presentation is Parental opt-in presentation and only the students with parent permission will be allowed to view it once approved by you the presentation will be posted on the website for all parents to preview as needed to consider whether they choose to opt in when their school gives them notification and possibility are there
161any questions I don't have any questions I just want to say thank you for all y'all do um the process Pregnancy Center always comes up with great um program designed to use in our curriculum here and it's it's just a real blessing for us to have that partnership with them yes ma'am thank you previously the board did approve the presentations for 7th 8th 9th and 11th as well as the Child Advocacy Center for K-5 Stacy speak to what happens next the next part of the process for this sure so the next part of the process is that the slides are put onto the website for parents to preview at the shack meeting Heather buffkin did present the entire presentation that she does and so she that is also already available for everybody to see and
162then when the school would like to send home the opt-in letter they have to do it two weeks in advance of anything and then the parents have the choice to opt in or to not be a part of it and where on the website can they access that information the specific Shack information is Under The Shack committee minutes and videos of the meetings and that's where her actual presentation is and then the slides will be posted Miss Oliver do I have a motion to approve the community service presentations to GISD campuses based on the recommendation of this local school help advisory committee Madam president I move that we approve the sixth grade health lesson plans by the browse's Pregnancy Center as part of the parent opt-in presentation about motion by Mrs girl and I will
163second that I have a second but thank you Mrs okay uh any discussion all in favor raise your hand opposed by the same thing at this time we will go to our technology plan Mr Wilson good evening board members and Dr Glenn twice a year I have the opportunity to get up here and stand in front of you wants to ask for money and I'm sorry about that and then this one is to tell you uh how we're doing and where we think we're going to need to be going so this is a technology plan as a living document we evaluate it twice a year officially unofficially we evaluated monthly weekly whenever as needed the idea is for us to provide children all the capabilities for them to maximize their potential Foster creativity allow them
164to enhance their collaboration communicate effectively and think critically um part of these the things that we use to evaluate this information is we use our inventory um both our Chromebook data our laptop data our CTE data we use campus Improvement plans we use usage data for the software that the children are using we also use surveys like write by its data allow this to gather information to provide to you I know we gave you a large 30-page document with a lot of information and I will not go with that word forward some more information we like to use so PM snapshot PM stands for public education information management system it is how we get our information and how we get our base funding for all of our children we use this information and how many
165students are enrolled in the entire education and try to design derive how many devices we're going to need both this year and for years coming our anticipated growth from last year this year was almost 200 children so we need 200 more devices we're trying to get to a one-to-one community but we keep growing and and we have to spend more money to do that we also have to spend more money on the repairs of the devices that are old and ancient so just give you an idea of where that is we also would like to decrease our digital footprint we want to teach staff and students how to be safe online how to be responsible respectful safe and not drive up a lot of emotion uh and uh another thing we want to include is
166our cyber security and just to give you a framework this one that falls near and dear to my heart we knock down approximately 65 000 attempts a day from people trying to get in from from different countries even locally in the United States we're we're looking at with about 45 000 per hour on just people trying to get in if you look at the information that we hold nine thousand eight thousand students and still Social Security numbers that have never been used those are the things that we're trying to safeguard all of their information all of your information so that's why it's near and dear to my heart and again I just want to state that our technology plan is a living document evaluation semi-annually and ensure our goals and objectives remained aligned technology must
167support teachers as they move from Simply believing in power technology to leveraging it in a classroom as technology evolves and our district grows we must continually Monitor and adjust our resources for all grade levels on a regular basis is there any questions oh excuse me Dr Glenn no I was just I want to commend Mr Wilson when he started as our Tech director he'd been with the district a year and was kind of thrown into this role and it was probably like drinking from a fire Rose a little bit and uh and he and his team have done a great job of really securing our Network and cyber security plays such a huge role in protecting not only not only our important data but but our finances as well and you see those reports in
168the news where districts or companies get hacked and I can tell you that this man his heart is to make sure that our information our school is protected so you're doing a great job and we appreciate you and you're still nervous when you speak but it's not not quite as noticing no that's bad Mr Wilson I want you to be sure to take back the message to all of your specialists in technology yes ma'am the appreciation that we hear every day from staff from teachers how quickly you respond however you do have like how you make their jobs easier so thank you not only for a great report but by the service you provide not only keeping you safe from hackers but uh thank you that really means a lot to me questions so moved
169I motion for Mr Moore do I have a second a second a second thank you Mr Wimberley I have a motion a second any other discussion all in favor show of hands let the records Shadow by vote seven to zero to approve the technology plan now going to miss Clark good evening I am excited to bring you a proclamation for the purple star school program the Texas Education Agency recognizes Texas districts and charter schools that show their support and commitment to meeting the unique needs of military-connected families and students the special honor is called the purple Star campus designation and it was created by the 86th Texas legislature through Senate Bill 1557 it is our desire and Our intention for our Granbury ISD schools to put in place the processes to welcome and even ease
170the transition for our military families that come and make Granbury their home so it is my recommendation that the board passed and improve the purple star school program Proclamation as presented in your board book and Tammy am I correct that this is the first step in the process to getting all of our campuses designated as purple Star campuses yes um I'll just go through the process pretty quickly so there are a few different steps that are required by tea one of them is to for the campus to designate a campus-based military liaison our principals are working on that deciding who they're going to dedicate to that job and their job is to put in place some PD for our teachers for welcoming military families and then put in place Family Support when those families come
171to Granbury ISD then create and maintain an easily accessible web page for family support and Lisa Oliver has been working very hard behind the scenes to make that happen for our whole district and that's in place and then campus transition programs so the campuses with their liaison have to have a transition program the goal there is to introduce School processes and procedures and introduce those families and new students to the school environment they have to designate some leaders and ambassadors and a lot of them already have those in place for a lot of our new students anyway and get some newcomer social events or guiding campus tours like take them to their classes and make sure they know where they're going and be a lunch friend for the first week or some of the examples
172that they give for how to welcome those students to campus and then the choice of initiatives some of the initiatives can be a resolution such as this one so that we're putting it in place saying that it's Our intention participate in November's family military family month or April's month of the military child so um highlighting our students that we already have in our district that are there and then a partnership with the school liaison we have a contact at jrb Fort Worth for the school liaison for our area and so those are the things that we're putting in place it is Our intention in April for as many campuses as possible to apply and become purple star designated uh thank you very much Tammy uh anything folks that we can do to show any kind
173of honor to the men and women who have served our country our schools certainly should step up I I and I would entertain a motion that the board uh pass and approve the purpose School the star school program Proclamation as presented do I have a motion so move Madam president uh motion by Mrs Gore and I will second second by Miss Townsend um any discussion uh Tammy do we have any idea about how many military families we have in the school district right now just our curiosity no okay oh that's okay [Music] actually uh Dr Glenn are we in a position where we get any uh funds are our military students whose uh whose parents are on active duty I don't believe so there are some benefits like they can uh they can go to
174Emma Robertson to the full day Pre-K and so there are benefits to govern uh the government allows for military families and so uh certainly we encourage and uh and try and inform all of those parents as to how many families we have that uh that are military families in GISD uh Tammy can run that report and I'll include it in the uh the recap on Thursday thank you any other discussion all in favor of approving the and passing and approving the purple star school program Proclamation is presented by show of hands opposed same sign let the records show by 7-0 that uh passes um now we are going to Dr Glenn thank you madam president this is an item on the agenda that was brought to your attention last month and then no action was
175taken so that this month it could be reconsidered with our two new trustees it is considered the approval of turf and LED lighting replacement for GISD Athletics trustees as you know the the turf field has reached the end of its lifespan along with the LED lighting Chad cheesy I believe is our head football coach I'm going to ask him to come to the podium he can answer specific questions related to the field ordinarily our athletic director Dwight Butler would be here but he's recovering from an accident and we wish him well in a speedy recovery good evening Madam president Board of Trustees Dr Glenn has Dr Green stated I'm here on behalf of Coach Butler and really any activity Club student that uses pirate Stadium or the Pavilion uh for the current situation of our
176turf in both facilities and the lighting at pirate Stadium at this point I'll answer any questions that you might have but the majority of that information is in your packet from the last meeting um I have some questions is the fs G bid still valid the original bid was only good for 30 days and it was dated uh November 4th of 2022. has that been still good Miss Kraft that bid will still be good I've had Hussein check on that the purchasing department um they did verify that we were good to come to this month without me and then another question did hello aside another 12 of 2022. that's the only way is that still the same same issue yes ma'am okay thank you um have you looked at injury reports to players on Turf
177versus grass not expressing the NFL it depends on who the autos are going to get I did have reached out and got some literature on that and depending on which Turf you go with specifically the one we're going with the injury rates have come it has come back down and they're really about the same on grass versus Turf nice plush grass field very very nice but not applicable at this level when compared to like a division one college who only uses it five times for a home game thank you um and then have you done a cost comparison Turf versus grass like the cost of turning the field over to grass and the cost of the maintenance water fertilizer for eight years and will the cost and the maintenance include the stripping of the field
178with the lines or would that striping be done by maintenance or by the coach so I have a cost analysis over a period of time for grass versus Turf maybe not to the extent that of all the questions that you asked that I can bring to you right now if you would if you would like to view it yes please thank you yeah and and quickly uh Mr Whitefield I know it wasn't too long ago I guess 10 years ago that the district had Grassfield and said a Turf and uh and so Scott Campbell was our maintenance director then and he still is now you had the opportunity to visit with him about the the annual cost then you'll cost with fertilizer and maintenance of the field the striping the painting um of course I
179mean it's a weekly uh run would run us between 50 and 70 grand a year I assume that's such a large number because it includes labor costs associated everything including that yes sir and then when you're looking at grass I believe in the past we've replaced that grass field about every three to four years so that's a complete revamp of that field and that striping has to be done Weekly right yes ma'am so that would make the field in usable by other activities while that was that is correct and if there's rain you couldn't have any other activities on there yeah that would be difficult for band to be on there for drill team for cheerleaders it would be strictly for Friday nights you couldn't even have practice on there thank you and given what
180the weather has been like this last week we could not have had anybody on the field for the last two weeks I will defer to coach cheesy but I would I would believe he would agree with that so yes I have a prime example of that if you'll think back to the week we were out for Thanksgiving uh uh neighboring School District reached out to use I'll practice on our field because their field was too wet and when coaches talk about too wet it's not that you couldn't put a kid on it but what's the damage going to be after the practice or the activity to the field for the remainder of the spring or the fall or whatever season we're in and so that's a prime that's a great example of what just happened
181a few weeks ago unfortunately you have to take care of our own and and once I gave that locally that local school district or neighboring School District the times of our soccer teams that we're practicing they decided to go elsewhere another question sorry um also I know we'd have to replace the turf in eight years so can they give a projected cost of what that might look like in eight years um because I believe the warranty is only good for eight years is that correct the warranty is minimum of eight years what I will what I will tell you is the current Turf that we have is think of your carpet it's sitting on Pebbles or stone and so the bottom side is wearing out from sitting on that versus sitting on a pad what
182we've proposed to y'all is to put this on a pad and what they're seeing is the the lap is going Beyond 10 years they don't have enough data yet because the pad hasn't been out long enough to give you the exact but but by protecting the bottom side of of the turf then then that's going to uh lengthen the life of the turf in addition that pad the foundation has a 25-year guarantee so whenever 8 10 12 years from now when we have to replace the turf or think of your carpet the pad doesn't come back up it's good for for 25 years which could be two life cycles of turf where it might be three life cycles of surf depending on how often we have to replace the turf so that fee would not
183come back it would just be the top Russian which is the turf there would be no foundation work for the next two cycles or 25 years maybe longer and my last question yes ma'am does the etherm and the Kush strain does that come do they come with the warranty uh the curse strain is the pad and it does the ecotherm is simply the inville and so the infield is good as long as the turf is good and then replace the turf then you replace the infield and I haven't done it enough Miss Graf to know if when they replace the turf if they if they pull all that the turf off and vacuum up the infield and then use it again like is it is it still good or do they actually bring back new
184infill I I don't have that answer for you but I have a guy on speed dial should you want that answer hey actually I've seen it done they actually roll it up with the infill in it and just get rid of it all of it okay and that pad that you're talking about that adds an extra layer of like safety for our students correct absolutely it's gonna it's gonna increase the impact ratio of uh players athletes hitting the turf which is only going to help and and when you're talking about concussion issues yeah great great question and yes it does help whereas like right now it's sitting on hard Pebbles I mean essentially so the only cushion there is the infield rubber yes ma'am thank you yes ma'am I have one one question for him
185that's Lowry on here on the maintenance and labor under the synthetic what would be the 13 750 a year would be what would that cost be for just labor you know maintenance a maintenance labor okay yes and and we have to there's a fee in there we got to sterilize it I mean it gets it gets dirty that didn't cost that much but that's just the maintenance and labor of it so the um the Thirteen thousand dollars if it was specifically to this year it may have been to add the extra um pellets on because that was about what the cost was am I correct Mr Whitefield that sounds familiar the 13 000 was the extra infield that we had this year that uh that helped the district pass the gmax I believe is whatever
186are you looking at it which reporter is it a district report oh you're looking at that okay so he pretty much what they did is I mean and they just divided out what it would cost you per year because you're gonna have a foot fee and and balance that out over over every year but yes there is a little bit of Maintenance um there is no you know there's no water you do have to drag it to keep the infield level um and then you also have to we sterilize it at least once a year just because of the sweat and sometimes unfortunately blood and anything else that gets on the field thank you sir yes ma'am any other questions so the proposal before us the recommendation is that the board approved the design build
187method is the best value to the district method of record as well as recommend that the board approved Health construction is the vendor at across cost of 193 710 or the park pavilion in 519 345 for Pirates stadium coach Butler also recommends adding The Matrix Helix and constrained shock attenuation pad for additional cost of 242 170. the total expenditure of the Top Turf renovation TurnKey project is 955-255. Mitch Butler also recommends adding the ecotherm which lowers the turf temperature for an additional 137 255 bringing to a grand total of 1 billion zero ninety two four eighty the lighting installation is a turnkey project that budgets uh nine ninety eight thousand two seventy three eighty two for the parts and ninety one thousand six ninety one forty two for the labor for an expenditure of 189
188965.24 the ecotherm that you talk about will that extend the life of the the turf not to my knowledge again I have a gallon speed dial that I can call but not to my knowledge and infield as an infield essentially what that does is that lowers the temperature of the turf which in turn can keep our our athletes or whoever's on the turf um safer and uh it can because of when you combine so so let me give you an example of turf now the black rubber pellets taken to the UV rays when those UV rays shine on it August through July through September the actual temperature on the turf is about 20 to 25 degrees hotter than the actual air temperature So my answer to your question is if you put the eco-firm infill
189in there and it's keeping the turf cooler I would think I would think it would extend the life of the turf but I don't have that a definite answer for you just because you're keeping the turf you're still getting the UV rays but you're keeping the temperature of the turf cougar is that a new technology yes very new and so what it does is it it it traps moisture whether it be rain or do it like today was just kind of Misty and then it releases that over a said period of time keeping the turf cooler and I've talked to a few coaches that have it it depends on which you know which team puts you in Turf what they decide to do and they said it's a noticeable difference whereas now it's a noticeable
190difference when you walk on it in August it's it's hot but um you have to have an infield equal front which is a new technology of a way to keep the turf cooler and the people that are on it cooter so so board are there also uh two uh required um electrical engineer uh and an independent uh gei engineer included in the bids so your emotion should be that for the total project with echotherm at one million 172 190 90.24 and the total project width that was with that and with the echo therm is one million 309 445.24 is according to the information in our book Dr Brandt no thank you madam president I will say this I know uh coach cheesy and both coaches and Coach Butler really like the Eco firm uh just
191one of my only concerns with it and I think it's probably a great product but something that is such a new technology that we haven't seen tested uh over over a decade or even a half a decade my concern would be be to jump out there because it's a hundred and thirty two thousand dollars and so we're already in the process of spending over a million dollars so as we as we just try and be a good stewards and maybe save a little bit of funding that that seems to be the location where we can save it without compromising the in the Integrity of the base or or the quality of the field to keep our athletes safe and in and I'm going to assume probably 90 percent of the fields we play on maybe
192a hundred percent this year were uh where the black pellets absolutely and at this point we're just going to be thankful for foreign it's it's in that shape it really is and the echotherm like after some time goes by and there's more data on it if that's something we decided we wanted to add later that's something we could do later down the road right and ideally it would be when you replace the turf the next time um but but yeah rubber pellets eco-firm we just we need we need turf hey I would entertain a motion Madam president I'll try this yeah move that we accept the helles proposal for the pirate Pavilion Stadium The Matrix helium helix the Kush strain minus the ectotherm in the electrical FS G proposal for the lighting opposed you have
193a motion before you do I have a second I'll second we have a motion in a second and so I need to further discussion I do I'm sorry go ahead now I just have a comment I'm not opposed to this it's just the amounts of money so I just want to make that comment and put that out there for the public to understand that it's there's a lot of needs and I'm just it's a lot of money it's just a comment I do have one question when we had talked earlier we had talked about the fact that uh the stadium just having the heat all the time and the work on it all the time that that's what made it wear out faster than the 10 years we at first thought might last is the
194Pavilion in the same situation it's covered correct the different the difference there is it was put in 21 years ago oh okay when it was originally built and so we've really got our money's worth with that Turf now you can walk down the silent of it you can see it splitting at the seams but we've got 21 years out of it and and I was explaining to someone today uh I didn't do this study but I could make an argument that that Turf gets used as much or more than the game field simply because of its proximity to the weight room so when you consider uh team and off season they can roll right out of the weight room into the Pavilion to do their agility work cardio work ladders cones whatever in addition to
195that we see ROTC down there frequently in the afternoons that place is covered up in the afternoons of kids whether it's ROTC or athletes and so I could make the argument that it gets used more but because it's now it gets hot in there but it doesn't get the UV rays right and so because it's covered we have really exceeded our life expectancy of of that Turf but walking on that Turf it was like the old old astral turf I mean it's it's hard and it we've got our money's worked out of that so if I'm understanding you correctly in 10 years when we have to change again we may not have to change I would make a strong case that you won't have to change that again for well I won't put a year
196out there but not the next life cycle of of turf on the field no way very good you'll be you'll be just fine with yes ma'am okay great thanks yes ma'am any other questions all in favor of approving these uh the motion as stated by Mr Wimberley show of hands all opposed but the um Mrs Grafton poses let the records show that the the motion passes six to one thank you thank you for coming coach um the next item is the ratification of the attorneys Dr McGee thank you madam president the ratification agreement between KBS Law Group and Granbury ISD sets before you um again you heard the presentation from Mr Bradshaw I felt like it was important to have an independent study done especially given the close working relationship I have with Mr Dawson
197I don't have a background in aviation and uh and certainly I I consulted our our own legal counsel who said that it would be wise should this become an escalated Personnel matter to have outside council do Discovery so the motion for you is to ratify that agreement do I have a motion Madam president I move that we ratify the agreement with KBS Law Firm thank you Miss score do I have a second and I'll second thank you Mr Moore discussion yes I have something to say um I I have a problem with the way it originated in the first place because it wasn't it wasn't brought before the board it was just superintendent and the president who made the decision so I think it lacks transparency um and it and I don't believe that because
198of that I don't believe it was a fair and unbiased investigation and those are just my comments and and I think I think that's great Insight Miss graft I would uh um just just remind everybody that it it's not uncommon um every month we bring before the board uh purchases in fact uh our actually our policy allows for purchases up to a hundred thousand dollars uh to be made by the district then ratified by the board and so it's it's not an uncommon practice but but I certainly understand your concerns and appreciate them I I would just like to say that uh because of the heat in the community and the comments that were being made and you were within your Authority and I certainly appreciate you talking with Miss uh Townsend about it but
199you have the authority to to make those decisions I I personally if we'd have waited until tonight to approve that hiring we would probably we would be January at least or later because of the holidays and I thought it was a good idea that y'all went ahead and did it and for a fact I I thought it was a great idea yeah and I was going to say I appreciate you reaching out to us by email because you did let all the board members know that that was going to be your recommendation so that it would be outside investigation and unbiased and I believe that that is what our community wants but also shouldn't we all have been notified yes we were by email but the fact that then we needed to make a decision
200and ratify something then as opposed to having the investigation done hiring the person and then coming and ratifying is that a normal practice Yeah and again you'll you'll find and you'll find that it's not again not uncommon for for the district to make purchases and then for trustees to come in and ratify those purchases and so um certainly is is as we move through the process you're going to find that more is more and more common there are thresholds that have to come before the board so purchase is over a hundred thousand dollars will obviously have to come before you before we just go out and purchase them but it again it is it is not uncommon for the district to make purchases and you can imagine the the amount of purchases that we make
201with a 80 plus million dollar budget every one of them does not come to the board before the purchase is actually made it made you want to add anything to that board policy allows us to make purchases between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars as long as we do it through a approved procurement method and then we bring it to you as a categorical spending on that month and we do that at the end of the board meetings typically and um for that month but it's typically for purchases single purchases between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars so anything below the hundred thousand dollar Mark we typically make those we do the PO we actually make the purchase make the and then we bring it to you as informational this is going to be well
202below that Mark and we as a board have approved that policy correct that is correct any other questions all in favor of ratifying uh that with the attorney uh raise your right hand oppose same side let the record show uh the vote is 6-0 with Mrs scrap I'll let him know 6-1 sorry I said it with our voting no and it's been like it's late in the evening um the next we'll go to the next uh Adam on the agenda and that's the uh back to the airplane Courtney uh gosh Courtney called last uh two weeks three weeks ago uh where all of this began to get hot in the community and I said can we put this on the agenda at that time there was no indication that that there would be a full
203report in time for this board meeting and she asked me if I would give her a second and I I we talked about the pros of getting to it early and those things that we might need to wait on and we decided to put it in full transparency to put it on here so that you folks knew that we wanted a transparent Fair evaluation of the situation after we put it to the on the agenda I will tell you that um I am very pleased with the report my heart burns because uh some of you heard the report and still are not sure that it was a fair and unbiased report but we have said it be put on there I don't know that we necessarily wanted a vote of any kind but perhaps we
204do Courtney you want to take it from there well I just think maybe we should take some of the recommendations from the report do that cost analysis I don't know if that's already been it's already being worked on yes Miss Gore and uh that the cost analysis is being worked on earlier tonight I didn't anticipate uh having Mr Gibson have to answer the question at that point uh but he is um he is really dialed in not only on uh the cost of of owning a plane and having our own CFI our own certified flight instructor and what that would cost students but he's also looked at it is owning a plane and using the flight instructors from in the pattern flight school and and he's also looked at it from the the position of
205uh the district not owning an airplane at all and using in the pattern planes and in the pattern instructors and so he's broken down all three of those for you to consider and I think there are advantages and uh and disadvantages to all of them and then certainly uh this is you know if you look for for a silver lining in this not only is it in in tightening protocols for the district uh but it's uh but it's certainly um really redefining uh where we're at because you know we were a tip of the spear district with uh with this flight program and so now it is uh what do we really want to accomplish out of it and and if I can just indulge for a second uh you know the the fact that
206we're 56 economically disadvantaged it's uh it's hard for a lot of kids uh to come up with 50 or 75 or 125 dollars an hour to fly an airplane and and so knowing that if we own our own plane and we have our own CFI we can certainly reduce those costs but what happens after they get their pilot's license and they graduate I mean you still have to go up to maintain your certification and uh and so then the question becomes uh have we have we given them a certification that from a fiscal standpoint maybe they can't maintain and is is that is that really the best um is that really the best Endeavor of the program so as we look for a silver lining in this or a lot of conversations we're have having
207I know Mr Gibson probably tonight before he goes to bed we'll share the data he has with you and if you want to dig into the numbers uh Todd Gibson is is the guy that can dig into those numbers he is a spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet looking at this and are we going to annuals and protocols in place yeah that's that's a great question so we've actually reached out to some contacts we had at Southwest Airlines we reached out to some local Pilots we have some Eagles uh Nest mentors I say Eagles Nest I guess we're not really Eagle's Nest anymore but our mentors that helped build the airplane that are with us tonight and uh and so we absolutely are working to strengthen all of our protocols and so there's things that just
208as we get into this and I'm I'm not a pilot I can't tell you what color the seats are in the airplane but what what I can tell you is that there are things that that need to be in Flight protocols like uh when when do you take a plane up uh what what time of day should it be what what should the weather be like what should the wind conditions be and attack me by email and say understand Dr Glenn has used it to Friday Colorado to ski trip and I said I don't know but I'll ask Mark assures me that it's safer than driving but I I don't know seems like a lot of metal up in the air Madam president the Warriors number one recommendation was to establish written guidelines and protocols
209on the operation of District aircraft and clarify and authorize appropriate use of the aircraft I'm set in on a group of Pilots Mr Gibson over a hundred thousand flight hours of individuals that are sitting in on this policy to try and come up with the protocols and how to operate this aircraft they're meeting tomorrow again I plan to be at that meeting I'm not really active in it but I am monitoring it and there are some good recommendations and discussions on the use of that aircraft should we decide to keep it thank you there's no motion for our action so we're going to the next place I'm sorry with all that we're saying when and how are we going to decide whether or not to keep that airplane I would think that we would wait
210for a report back from these folks that are working on the protocol that seems to me to say that we're definitely keeping the airplane so you're wanting to see the protocol and then decide whether or not you want to keep the airplane no I I think the I think the protocols are going to talk about um conditions for any student getting into any plane is that that you're understanding too Mr Wimberley so whether we put even if we put a student in a in a plane for in the pattern there are certain guidelines and rules that we want followed and and without getting into too much detail we know sometimes Pilots uh make decisions to go up into the air and in those decisions in hindsight were not good decisions and we know that that
211played out uh recently with with friends of ours um and so um so we want to make sure anybody taking up any of our students has very specific guidelines for taking those kids up in the flight school itself has its own protocols in the pattern does and these policies that would be put forth by the school might be in excess of that maybe saying it it'd be more restrictive so I would expect that coming forth will be some policies that no more than 10 page document that would cover all the protocols and expectations of how how that aircraft is used and who authorizes certain things with the aircraft is discussed by the lawyer so it sounds like it'd be more of a cost analysis issue that would drive that decision and I think well I
212I think the cost analysis is going to be ready quickly okay yes I think we need to have that cost analysis because we do have uh buses that are in very bad shape and we need to see that monthly cost however what that is what it's costing us for a child and one thing I do want to clarify about CTE that people may not be aware of is um like so for example if we did decide not to keep the plan and we sold it those funds can only be used in the CTE program they can't be used to go buy a bus right exactly so that that is um yeah so CTE funds are completely separate so we couldn't take any of those funds that we would possibly be saving on the CTE side
213and then spend them somewhere else yeah that's fine but maybe we could buy a simulator with it instead of a real airplane yes any further discussion there being no motion we'll move on to uh this graph amendments to the board operating procedures so I wanted to discuss first of all the first thing I wanted to discuss was this was not this is not the verbiage that the verbiage that I had for what I wanted to put on the agenda was discuss and take appropriate action to modify our Sops policy reference be illegal be local BJ legal BGA local from two trustees agreeing to place the subject on the agenda back to one trustee so my first issue is that um forwarding and not only that but I believe this on the agenda this this was
214also it's two separate issues because Karen had a specific issue and so did I so I would like to politely ask of it in the future the wording of what we would like to place on the agenda is not changed um and then to move forward with that I would just ask that we I'd just like to make a motion that we move to modify our Sops back to the way it used to be um oh also there's a before I forget there's also in underdeveloping the board agenda in our Sops on page five which was revised in June of 2022 there is a correction that needs to be made it currently reads when three or more members of the Board of Trustees that needs to read too because it's incorrect but I'd like to
215make a motion um that we go from two trustees back down to one have a motion before you do you have a second a second we have a second discussion or any discussion well I will tell you I will pass this in June and I was asked for the first time to be someone's second so I don't know uh all right no no discussion um with it requiring four people to amend anything or bring anything to fruition bring having two people do that is is I think appropriate matter of fact I would say three people would be okay to to approve something to go on an agenda item but I would I would speak against that and and before uh keeping it the way that it is I would just like to remind people that
216we are elected by our constituents and when we silence a trustee which is exactly what happened on June 2nd when it was changed from one to two we are not just only silence in the trustee we are silencing the voters and that's something we need to keep in mind have you been denied any agenda items well you're you're saying you've been silent so I'm just asking for prayers to put things on the agenda that have not been put on the agenda so they were denied I would say that's I mean if I've asked him they've not been put on the agenda that that would be a definition of yeah I know you haven't personally asked me to be a second for anything so I haven't denied you so I didn't ask you right that's what
217I'm saying if you're saying somebody else has have you reached out to other trustees to see if I have reached out to other trustees okay well you've never reached out to me Melanie no I haven't reached out to you but I've reached out to others well I would if if um I mean I know we made this this decision back in June and it wasn't for naught it there was reason behind it and if a trustee doesn't have a second with the first person that they talk to there's other trustees that you can talk to and reach out to that maybe would be your second it's it's really more about just making sure that uh you're prepared you have your agenda item the way you need it worded so that you can get what you're
218trying to accomplish done and sometimes it helps to have someone to bounce those ideas off of and a second also allows it to get to the discussion phase correct because without that second it doesn't get discussed and if once it gets to the to the agenda it may or may not require a lot of time by administrators to prepare the background information because that's an issue that if you know you're going to get a second then at least two of us want it on the agenda so because yeah sometimes there's reports that need to be made there's a lot of information or discovery that need to be done um so yeah it it definitely is something that's advantageous for us to have is it not we are not all individual people that we can do
219our own research and make our own wording on our own agenda and then bring It Forward you certainly can do that it's often when something's put on the agenda it requires information from our our administrators to spend time and effort in researching the information that's as far so I that person that one person that wants to put something on the agenda can't go to an administrator themselves and ask to have something put on there they would have to have a second IQ second Miss graff's uh agenda item to that you can still request information no I think what what Melanie is talking about and what we were understanding is if I want to put something on the agenda I have to go get her approval too and then the two of us have to say
220it's okay not it's not necessarily approval it's a second so it's more about having someone to bounce your ideas off of and making sure like you've got all the information ready and prepared to go before the board to make a decision so I think all the people that voted for me probably voted because they thought I was intelligent enough to do that yeah I'll call for the boat all in favor of going back to not having for having any individual on the board who wants to put something on the agenda for it to be put on without a second person all in favor raise your hand all opposed raise your hand let the record show that the emotion fail 5-2 going to the last item which is a my item of information only and I
221believe Madam president I believe that there were two libraries amendments that they wanted to make to the SOP okay I'm sorry no that's okay I have the um the same issue Melanie and I are separate trustees we submitted two different agenda items so I respectfully asked just as this point was just made that our agenda items are not put together um the public needs more information on the discussion action items they're vague and they do not give the public the information necessary to ask questions that they may have about the subject so what I'd like to suggest is take the discussion action and move it on the agenda so they are above the public comments so the public can hear what we have to say about the item and then they can comment on their
222questions and then we'll come back and vote on it after they've commented on their questions makes sense so are you making a motion was that emotional I will make that motion yes that we move um the the agenda items around so that the discussion and action items um are above the public comments and then we'll come back after the public comments so that way it gives the public more information about what we're talking about and then we'll come back and vote on it afterwards so you want to move the public comments before we go into our action items on the agenda you want to move those after that yes move the the action items up here then put the public comments then we come back and vote on all this because the public wants to
223know what's going on and then they want to be able then we can listen to what they have to say help make a decision and then have the consent agenda after that and I'll second that okay emotion uh to put the public comments after the agenda item motion by Mrs Lowry seconded by Mrs Graf any comments or discussion I have a question I want to just make sure I'm understanding so for example we have our discussion action you're saying that we would go through consider do our discussion of each one of these items but not make any decisions then open it up for agenda open it up for questions so we'd have to stop everything let them write out their questions so that they could turn it in and then we would listen to that
224and then we would go back on each one of those and make a decision well if they've already come up and talked about something like they have now what we want to do is then they could just come right back up they don't have to fill out forms and turn it back in if they've spoke they want to speak on that and they've turned something in and they've spoken on it it's just a matter of of the public being allowed to speak on something because then what happens is we talk about it and then they may have another question and if we vote on it then it's done and gone and they never get any time to give any more information about what they want to say when the the advantage of having the comment
225public comments prior to any action we take or anything we say we have what they feel before we actually take an action I don't know if that's positive or negative but it certainly uh that was would be the purpose I would think uh Miss Townsend you might correct me if I'm wrong but well I understand that but after we discuss it they may want to add something to what they had to say or maybe a question that they didn't think because they didn't know the information well actually by law uh the only place that they can speak is a public comment section and there can be no interaction between the public and the board by by law during the discussion of an action item okay so we have a motion before us to move the
226second uh and a second from this graph to move the uh comment section after the action items am I right now that's what you stated but then I when you explained it then you wanted an opportunity for a second comment section so I guess I'm confused um from just what I read from it earlier was the discussion action should move on the agenda above the public comments so the public can hear what we have to say and then they come back and then they can ask questions okay so so would we go through each Edge in the item and then they come back or would they come back accordingly to the individual items like discussing you have her motion to put them before Okay so you have a motion a second all in favor of
227it raise your hand all opposed same sign let the record show that the the that the motion fails uh with Mrs uh Lowry and Miss Graff voting for it the rest of the board voting against it and then we will move to um Miss Lowry I think you asked for an information item on the agenda um what I had asked for was a um a report on where we are on the books right and um what this says is as far as inappropriate Library classroom material policies and procedures and I know that we keep saying that we have this procedure and it's all in place I know there are a lot of parents that have come and said they either missed it or they didn't know or what are they talking about I didn't see
228it when we signed up the kids but as far as all of those kinds of policies go tea policy efb local page six six three twenty twenty two a major Criterion for the final decision on challenging Library material is the appropriateness of the resource for its intended educational use the polarity opinion of the Supreme Court case Board of Education versus Pico then it says CEF legal Joe uses a standard that no challenge instructional resource shall be removed solely because of the ideas expressed therein but the opinion allows the removal of materials because they are pervasively vulgar and based upon the lack of educational suitability of the library material they refer to EF legal page 1 10 21-21 a district May remove materials because they are perversively pervasively vulgar or based solely upon the educational suitability
229of the books in question Legal Services 2021 has a very long paragraph talking about the inappropriate vulgar content for schools and it says can officials remove content that's vulgar obscene or pornographic and then it says the power to determine what is vulgar lewd and plainly offensive lies first with the administrators and ultimately with the school board in 2022 tasby dropped the vulgar lewd and inappropriate for school-aged readers in 2022 didn't say why the policies and procedures for the sexually explicit age and appropriate perversely vulgar and lacking educational suitability go with a statute of 4323 obscenity the obscenity applies and there are no exclusions for education in the penal code 4323 a definition of obscene is obscene Behavior language and images indecency and morality immorality [Music] I have also the Supreme Court case of the Pico
230case and in paragraphs 193 through 197 they talk about how this has been discussed then with the Supreme Court they talk about the reasoning for this and talking about how secondary and education secondary schools are inculcative in nature and the libraries of such schools serve as supplements to this inculcative role unlike the University or public libraries Elementary and secondary school libraries are not designed for freewheeling inquiry they're tailored as the public school curriculum is tailored to the teaching of basic skills and ideas Justice Brown cannot rely on the nature of the school libraries to escape the fact that the First Amendment right to receive information simply has no application to the one public Institute in which it is very nature is a place for the selective conveyance of ideas that means that none of these
231children are having their first amendment rights violated and after all is said the most obvious reason that petitioners removal of the books did not violate the respondent's right to receive information is the ready availability of the books elsewhere they can go to the public library they can go borrow it from a friend they can go to a lot of other bookstores the government as educator does not seek to reach behind the onto the confines of the school indeed the following the removal from the school library of the books at issue in this case the local public library put all nine books on display so the education of the children's Minds at GISD and their successful future are the responsibility of the adults so I would like to say I believe that we need to not
232go through all of these other things considering our own tea policy says that we don't have to and that we should be sequestering all of these kinds of books obscenity books out of the libraries and put them somewhere probably this this building so that they're not in the hands of children and that includes the playing English Lit classes and the AP classes because there's no place for obscenity in schools as dictated by as we and both their policies and tea so I would like to move that we take them out we sequester them and then we'll go through hot figuring out which ones are or are not um vulgar or obscene you're wanting to remove all the books not every book in the library no just the ones that are obscene do you have a
233list that you could yes I will supply a list I'll second that there's not enough this is a report only Oh I thought you made a motion I'm sorry no no if what we can do is if you want to provide a list then we could put that on a future agenda I'll have that done in January I'll get the list and I would say just is is a is just a point I think is a is a district we do want to resolve this uh speaking on behalf of every administrator in the room uh and probably community members because I know there are a few of you that that are ready to have this behind you too uh the board the board makes policy and and the administration implements that policy and um and
234so while we're preparing that action item I think it would be a good idea maybe for a committee of Trustees to to sit down and look at our policy because we adopted the tea model policy and honestly um we even see flaws in it and and that would also be be a good place to start just to overweight have been any of these issues moving forward as well yes there also needs to be a definite look at what kind of books we're going to be bringing into the libraries I I have a question I'm Sorry Miss Lowry uh because I didn't prepare the agenda obviously I got to the dance light uh Miss Townsend uh the the the language on both the issues that these our two trustees have brought up the inappropriate books was
235that your language or was that oh I'll take responsibility for that um the the two items on the standard operating procedures I listed it as one one item thinking it could be Consolidated in discussion and voted on like it was in in the future I'll make sure I take the exact verbiage and put it on the agenda that way on the reports uh the language I had I thought it was reported as an update not an action item and so that was just my misunderstanding no but that update but then as it um as it came out this way I thought it looked like it was going to need to have a discussion and when and we can have that fixed by January leave oh we'll go into executive session at oh my gosh it's
236been years since we've gone this late uh at the time is 9 47 48 and we'll go into a brief executive session uh under oops uh discussion um personnel 551074 discussion of officers employees and Personnel matters foreign you know action taken from the executive meeting and this meeting is adjourned good night Merry Christmas to all of you